by CC Monroe
“You can come over here if you want,” I whisper, the quiet falling around us.
She doesn't say a word but does just that, her feminine body molding into my wall of muscle. Kate’s warm… perfectly warm.
“He’s going to be all right, right?” she asks moments later, when her wrestling of the sheets quiets and she's found the right spot against me.
“It’s not about him anymore, Kate.”
“Nick. It is for me. I may have decided to leave and end what isn't good for me, but Eric isn't well, and I don't want to make it worse.”
“That’s the cycle, baby. This is where it always begins and gets you every time.” I don't touch her when my hands ache to.
“Yeah,” she drags out, laying silent again for a brief minute.
“Will I be okay?”
I debate this carefully. Do I lie to numb the pain, or do I tell her the truth and let her grieve the pain before she heals?
“Not at first. You won’t like it, Kate. You will hurt even more than you do now. That’s part of it.”
“But I don't want to feel it.” She shakes her head and pulls herself in closer.
“You're already feeling it, kitten.”
“Don't sugar-coat it.” She scoffs.
“I won’t. Because I will never lie to you.”
“Sometimes I just wish you would.”
I grin at this. “Nope. Not gonna happen.” We go silent for the hundredth time. I touch her hair, running my calloused hand through her golden strands.
“Remember New York City, the show at Madison Square two years ago?” I bring up something happy, switching gears.
“Oh my God. Nick, you know that still pisses me off that you did that to me. Piss off,” she murmurs.
I laugh, the memory coming back in vivid detail.
“I was so embarrassed, and I had to pee. So bad.”
One night, Kate had been the one pranking me like she always does, and I wanted revenge.
“You’re the one who believed me after you made me bet that some guy couldn’t outdrink Ben. I had to wear a drag queen’s high heels for a solid twenty minutes.”
She laughs and I shake my head, that part not being humorous to me at all.
“You made the bet, and I just simply offered up the losing challenge. Ben can outdrink a sailor. I was sure he was a shoe-in.” She shrugs, slightly running her hand over my arm, her fingers tracing my track scars.
“Yeah, bullshit, you know it had been a while since he drank. You trapped me, so karma got you.”
§
“I need to pee so bad, and I can’t find a damn bathroom anywhere,” Kate says from the side of the stage while the opening interlude plays, and the band-members all take their places on stage behind the curtains. After the interlude plays, the curtain in front of Ben will drop, and the crowd will go wild. Then JJ’s curtain will soon drop, and he’ll do a three-minute drum solo to hype the crowd before they start. That’s when it hits me. Payback for Kate getting me with the high heels.
“It’s on the other side of the stage, kitten.” She’s bouncing up and down, her urge much stronger than her awareness of how far into the interlude we are. Everyone already took the stage as the rap song of Ben’s choice plays. “Go behind JJ, straight through, and the bathroom is over there. Be careful.”
“Oh, that’s so damn far. Ugh, fine!” She takes off, and Sadie slaps my arm.
“Oh my gosh, Nick, she is gonna be so mad.” Sadie’s southern accent is heavy next to me.
“That’s what she gets for making me wear high heels.”
She shakes her head, and we watch the next few seconds play out for what I’m sure feels like minutes to Kate. It happens fast—JJ’s curtain drops, and the light hits him as Kate stops behind him like a deer in headlights. JJ doesn't notice and starts playing, but the rest of the band and the crowd do. We all start laughing as Ben turns and gives me a head shake and a smartass smile.
Kate looks over, and I quirk my brow, and I know she realizes this is payback, but she doesn't know what to do. So she starts dancing off beat to a point where it looks like she has no idea what dancing even is. Disco-style and all. Her face grows redder, and her embarrassment hits rock-bottom as she drops to her knees and crawls off stage in a hurry, barely missing the speaker. When she gets to the other side and out of the audience’s view, she turns around and flips me off. Screaming some sort of profanity, she goes in search of the bathroom before she returns a few minutes later to rip me a new one.
“You jackass! I cannot believe you did that to me!” She pushes against my chest with both hands, but I don't falter even one step. Sadie is laughing next to me. She and I walked around the very back of the stage and waited for her to come out of the bathroom. When we were greeted, I knew she was going to have my head.
“I’m the jackass? How about that’s payback for those fucking death-trap shoes you made me end up wearing at the bar last night.”
“Oh please! This is way worse! There are like twenty thousand people out there, Nick!”
“Twenty thousand seven hundred to be exact,” I say with a smug look on my face.
“Oh! I hate you.” She crosses her arms, her cheeks going red.
I bend down and bring my mouth to her ear. “Yeah, but we both know you like it when we play like this.” I know she's with Eric, but I don't care, because I'm not afraid to dance with the devil.
Her breath hitches. I can’t hear it, but I see it in her body.
“Kate? Why don't you come out, since you were so eager to make an appearance?” That lust leaves her then, and embarrassment sneaks its way back in.
“Oh my gosh!” Sadie gasps, looking just as mortified as Kate.
“No! Ben Cooper, don't you dare!” Sadie jumps to Kate’s defense, and Ben gives her a cocky grin.
“All right, my lady said I better not, and I know my place. Fellas, you know what’s up!” Everyone hollers and whistles, and Ben gives her a wink. Sadie starts blushing as Kate stomps off. I now have a beautiful ass I have to kiss tonight.
“Kate!”
“Fuck off, Nick!” she hollers, marching away, and like a dog with his tail between his legs, I run after her to make it up to her in the only way I can—groveling.
§
“You deserved it and you know it,” I tell her, and she rolls her eyes. I can tell without even seeing her face.
“No, I didn't, but whatever. I won’t argue with stupid,” she hisses.
“Easy, firecracker, I’m not a stupid man. Just a man who likes to tease his lady.”
Her body breaks out in goose bumps, and the tension grows tenfold.
“I’m exhausted. Can we sleep now?” She wisely changes the subject.
“Yes, close your eyes and get some rest. Night, kitten.”
“Goodnight, Nick.”
Just like that, we fall into the most comfortable silence one could actually be in, and she rests, letting her burdens lay on me for just tonight. The next few days will be hell without a doubt.
Chapter Six
Kate
I’m exhausted, even after three days of rest per Nick’s orders. He didn't give me much of an option, standing over me like a guard dog almost every second. But the truth is—one I will never tell—I'm thankful. I needed a detox, a prolonged pause from life to evaluate what happened to me in the past few years.
The woman I’ve become, the things I have done for love, and the parts of me that I no longer possess as my own. I became a sum of someone else and lost who I was. I feel heartbroken to say goodbye to Eric, but I have never seen so clearly what I need to do as I do today.
Nick didn't ask me once about it. He watched movies with me, ate with me, talked about memories with me, and kept his hands to himself like a gentleman, never trying to meddle in my choice of what to do next.
I respect that. I needed it, and believe me, I felt that. Eric really brings out the worst in me, and the worst parts in me want to love him, but the best parts of me
know I can’t.
Here we are, and it’s never been more unblurred. What’s weird though—the strangest thing I am feeling right in this moment—is the content feeling of release and new beginnings. It’s a let go and rebirth.
I was scared the first day—hell, even half of day two—of the idea of leaving him. A fear of what it would do to him consumed and swallowed me like a black hole, and it brought up this feeling of utter selfishness. But it’s not my job to heal someone who refuses to be healed. It is not my job to lose me in the process of trying to save someone else.
“I’m going to sit outside on the stairs. You are not going to be left alone,” Nick says a few steps behind me like a bodyguard as we reach the bottom of the stairs of Eric’s apartment.
“You have to stay outside unless I yell for you. This has to be him and me, Nick. We need this goodbye in our way.”
He nods, not arguing, and I repeat the nod. Planting himself on the bottom, I leave him and walk slowly up toward Eric’s door.
Last time I came to do this, terror was waiting on the other side of the door, and I’m not sure what will be lingering there now. According to Ben and Sadie, he is just off a bender. I knock this time. This was my home, but now it’s a place that houses my saddest memories I want to say goodbye to. I hear him on the other side, and my heart about beats out of my chest, and my stomach may explode with nerves. Then, it opens. That face, the face of the man beneath the poison. The man I wanted to see every day but lost in fast, fleeting moments.
“Baby?”
My head drops, and the tears start rushing to the surface already. When I look back up, his eyes are glossy, his tears fighting the fight just like mine, but they stay fixated on the bruises on my neck.
“Eric. Can I come in?”
He knows what’s coming. This isn't going to be a time where we say goodbye for an hour or a day or two. It’s forever. The chapter on us is closing, and it’s going to be too big to lock with one turn. There will be a lot of effort that I will have to put into locking this broken vessel of a book.
“Yeah, of course.” He steps aside, and I risk a look back at Nick, needing anything to hold in my heart before it shatters. Those eyes—I see my chance at redemption, and the little glimpse sticks to me like glue.
I look around at the place, and it’s as if nothing happened here just days ago. He cleaned it all up, except the small scuff on the wall that was made during my struggle. I sit on the couch, and Eric sits in front of me on the coffee table. And before we can even speak, we collectively give up the fight and the tears fall. His eyes are red from being off the stuff for a few days. His hair is untamed and longer, and the full beard he has grown makes him nearly unrecognizable.
“I’m sorry. So fucking sorry, Kate,” he sobs, his whole body shaking as he falls to his knees in front of me and drops his head in my hands. I cry along with him, leaning to place a kiss to the crown of his head.
“Me too.” My chin quivers, and his shakes move through him and into me, our hearts, bodies, and souls crushing into nothing.
“I never meant to hurt you the way I did. But I don't deserve your trust or belief in me.”
I shake my head and lift his head by his chin. “You deserve all the forgiveness, Eric. You do. But you don't deserve me anymore. We are no good for each other. You know that, right?”
He shakes his head in denial, but he knows it’s the truth. It’s all in his eyes. “I believed I could change. I loved you enough to want that.”
“I know.” What else can I say? It’s the reason I stayed, because I knew there was a desire to love me more than the addiction. But with each time I took him back, it enabled him to repeat his actions, and that makes me just as guilty in this relationship.
“You don’t deserve me either. You deserve someone strong and willing to not lose herself in order to save you. You are worth loving, Eric. But you have to do it yourself, and whoever she is, she will be able to push you through. I enabled your behavior. We were toxic.”
“You are everything right in my life. You are everything, and I can’t lose that.”
“You have to let me go, Eric. Please. Release me. Your hands are around my neck, and I can’t get out of that grip until you let me go. Please.” I shake his face that is now cupped in my hands. This is harder than I thought. I walked in here sure and strong, and now I’m anguished.
“I’ll be lost. I can’t do this without you.”
“No, you can. You are lost, and no matter how much light seeps through the cracks of my broken heart, I can’t guide you back, Eric. I never will.” He stays quiet, and our eyes search one another.
Like a bulb clicks on, he feels the goodbye, knows there is no scenario where I leave here his today. That moment I knew would shatter me to nothing happens then. In that split second, years of love and pain and heartache become ashes.
“Okay. I release you, Kate. I’ll let you go.” He stands then and moves away from me, heading toward the door. Opening it, he doesn't look at me yet, just waits for my next move.
I sit still on that couch for a few more seconds before I accept this is it. I remember the smells, the colors, the feelings, making sure I will never forget this last moment with Eric. Because somewhere in me feels this isn't just goodbye, but it will be the last time I see him.
If I’m going to heal, I have to sever every part of me from him. That solidifies when I almost step out and he grabs my hand and pulls me to him. He drops his forehead against mine, and he waits a pause or two, before he whispers, “Forgive me. Love again and forgive me for everything. You deserve the stars and the moon and everything right in this world. But never forget that my love for you was real and it was fierce, Kate Beckett. Loving you was the only thing I got right in this life.”
And that’s it. I can’t find the words. I can’t even say goodbye, but I feel it, and he accepts it, connected in that moment enough to feel my words that can’t find life.
I kiss his cheek, and he kisses my forehead, and with one last glance, I leave him. I walk away from a life that nearly killed me. Only to feel more dead inside than I ever have.
Now, I have to heal…but where do I start? Looking at Nick, he meets me halfway on the stairs and wraps me in his arms while I break down in front of him—for the millionth time. Crying out everything I have left from my time spent with Eric. I did my best, and I need to learn how to accept that this was more than enough.
“Let’s go, kitten.”
I nod, but my heart is still back upstairs in that apartment with Eric. The car ride is just as devastating and overwhelming with a wide spectrum of emotions. I have never for one moment in my life felt this broken. It’s ironic, to think all through life I exuded this personality that I never needed anyone, that not one person could ever hurt me but myself, and that is exactly what I did. I let Eric dictate my heart.
The night I met Eric, he was doing cocaine, high out of his mind, and he still had a way of sweeping me off my feet. I walked right into that lion’s den, covered in meat, like prey willingly throwing themselves into the mouth of the beast. But that’s not Eric's fault; that was my own. No matter the way Eric was, he didn't do this to me. I did it all on my own.
“Kate? You hungry?” Nick breaks into my wayward thoughts, and I shake my head.
“You need to eat something, baby. You haven't eaten much in days.”
I look over at him, and like word vomit, I snap, “Food isn't the first thing on my mind.” I seethe, and I wait for him to yell back at me, but he does the opposite. He stays tightlipped and looks back at the road. Regretting that instantly, I debate an apology, but that won’t make it believable. So staying quiet is the only acceptable thing to do.
His phone rings, and Ben’s name lights up the screen on his dash.
“Ben. What’s up?”
“I need some things done before we leave for the first leg of the tour, and I need some help getting them finished. Sadie and I have an appointment for Melody tomorrow, so I’l
l need you to do them for me. Is that all right?”
“Yeah, brother. I can do that. I’ll text you when I get home.”
I don’t acknowledge that no one is talking, even though Ben is still on the phone. I imagine Ben and Sadie are waiting there for me to speak, but I don’t.
“Kate?” Sadie’s voice calmly comes through.
“Yeah?”
“Are you okay?” I don't say a word. “Okay, I’m sorry. I’m here. We will talk tomorrow. I love you.”
“I know.” That’s all that needs to be said.
Ben and Nick say their goodbyes just as we pull up to Nick’s place. I climb out, my legs feeling weak from the burdens I’ve been carrying and, like Nick stated, my lack of eating. Expecting Nick to meet me when I get out, I’m surprised when he doesn't. He waits for me to head toward his apartment and follows a few steps behind me.
We meet at the door, and I step aside for him to unlock it. When it opens, I head straight to the bathroom and shut the door, locking it behind me as I crumble to the floor. My hands make a mess of my hair as I drop my head in them, pulling and tugging at the strands, wanting so badly for this to all be just a dream.
It’s not.
I lost Eric—which no matter how much it was needed, or how badly I wanted to do it, it still causes me so much pain.
I hear Nick moving around the kitchen, making himself some food. He gives me space, when really that’s the kind way of saying he's avoiding me.
I stand, deliberately not making eye contact in the mirror as I undress. I don’t want to look at myself, knowing if I do, I will crack that mirror with my fist to hide the lost woman in the reflection. Once naked, I turn on the bath and make sure the water is scalding. When it’s filled to the pressure point, I climb in, my skin burning and turning red instantly, but it feels good and stops the shivers. My adrenaline is dying; I’m losing my sense as my mind, soul, and body give up the fight. My heart doesn't hurt anymore, because there is nothing left of it—I’m simply numb.