Closer (Closer #1)

by Mary Elizabeth

  It’s dangerous.

  “I love you. I love you so fucking much,” he cries.

  Sometimes the bad outweighs the good, and sometimes it’s better to let go before it kills you.

  “It’s not enough. Loving me is not enough anymore, Teller,” I say, lowering my arms to my sides and going completely still. Breathing heavily, my chest expands, touching his shirt, so I don’t breathe until my face burns and he lets me down.

  He falls back, narrowing his eyes, but when I attempt to move past him, Teller cages me between his arms. “What are you saying?”

  Studying the face of the only person I have ever loved like this, it’s nearly impossible not to run my fingers through his hair and kiss his lips just to dissolve this pain. But he isn’t mine anymore, and I take off the ring.

  “No.” His expression crumbles with his tone. “I made a mistake, Gabriella. It won’t happen again.”

  “I can’t marry you, Teller.” Tears distort my vision, and I feel my face fall, my heart fall, the world beneath my feet fall. “We tried to make this work, but we’re not good for each other.”

  “How am I supposed to live without you now?” he asks. The muscle in his jaw tenses, protruding the bluish veins in his neck.

  “You should have thought about that before you lied to me.” I drop the ring, unmoving as it hits the wooden floor, sliding under the coffee table, and spinning to a halt.

  I can’t forgive him for this.

  He crossed the line.

  “There’s nothing I can say to you?” Teller finally steps away, patting his pockets for a cigarette. His eyes are rimmed red and bloodshot, and he swallows hard, running a hand through his curly hair. “We’re over?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where are you going to go?” He sits on the edge of the coffee table, resting his forearms on his knees, keeping his eyes down.

  Speaking over the hammering in my chest, I wipe tears from my chin on the back of my hand and say, “Back to St. Helena for a while. We’re going to sell the house, so I may as well go up there and get things ready.”

  Teller looks up, creasing his forehead. “When did you decide you’re going to sell it?”

  “Today,” I answer. “I told Em I’m going to need the money since I resigned at the hospital.”

  There’s a scratch across Teller’s cheekbone, and my fingernails are broken. The red marks around his throat and the rip in the neck of his shirt are my doing. Incapable of controlling my hurt and anger, I lashed out, just like I did in Las Vegas, just like I did a hundred times before that.

  Realization hurts like the lies he told.

  But not nearly as bad as abandonment.

  Loneliness, a constant companion who never goes far, creeps in slowly, hardening my bones, my heart, and my spirit. The light inside of me dims, casting dark shadows on my will to be anything other than bitter. Holding the palm of my hand to my chest, I close my eyes and breathe out as walls are built high, leaving me defensive and untrusting.

  Everyone I love leaves eventually.

  I’m a curse.

  “What the fuck, Ella?” Teller stands, cutting me with his eyes. The muscles in his hands flex, and his face burns. “You quit your job? You’re moving nine fucking hours away? When will I see you again?”

  Pressing my lips together, I lower my stare to the floor before looking up to say, “You won’t.”

  The color drains from his face, and his expression hardens, shutting me out completely. Teller doesn’t prevent me from leaving like I assume he will. Quiet rage proceeds to the front door, opening it with such force the knob punctures the drywall, shaking picture frames and windows. Flinching, I cover my mouth with the palms of my hands and freeze as he walks outside. A long moment later, I recover and gather the small bag I packed to spend the night with Emerson and Nic, slinging it over my shoulder.

  Teller’s retrieving a wooden bat from the trunk of his Range Rover when I join him in the driveway. A lit cigarette hangs between his teeth, and he squints, pulling nicotine and smoke into his lungs.

  “I’ll call you when my plane lands,” I say numbly, unsure if I mean it or not. “My brother’s expecting me.”

  Flicking his Marlboro into the street, Teller exhales a lungful of dense white smoke over his head and smirks. He strokes the bat in his hand, walking past me, around to the driver side of my G-Wagen.

  “Don’t fucking bother,” he says, swinging the slugger across my windshield. Glass splinters, but it doesn’t break completely until he hits it again.

  “Stop!” I shriek, dropping my backpack. Panic sends a rush of adrenaline through my veins. “What the hell are you doing?”

  Both headlights go next and the passenger side window. “Try leaving me now.”

  “Teller, please stop.” Crying out, I watch in horror as he destroys the first thing I bought myself after I graduated from college and got the job at the hospital. Broken shards of glass rain on the driveway, tapping concrete in a melody of destruction.

  “Why would I have told you Joe was fucking Kristi?” he asks, bringing the wood down on the back window. “They’re dead, Ella. They’re gone. Why did it matter?”

  “No!” I shout as he breaks the side mirror.

  “I didn’t want to hurt you more than you already were, baby,” he says, eyes alive with madness. He grins. “But now I don’t give a fuck. Good luck leaving me now.”

  Breaking out the driver’s side window, Teller drops the bat, letting it roll down the driveway to the gutter. He crushes broken shards of glass under his shoes, not bothering to look at me before he takes a walk down the street, leaving me to pick up the pieces.

  Now

  “Hello,” she answers the phone.

  “Fuck your hello,” I say. “Don’t say that to me. It’s been three weeks, Ella.”

  She sighs into the receiver. “I’m not ready to come back yet, Tell. I’m still—I’m still thinking about everything.”

  Cupping my hands over the end of my cigarette in the designated smoking area, I burn paper and tobacco with a match. Sulfur and smoke burn out, and I take a deep drag, needing the chill it gives.

  “I got the Wagen fixed,” I say, exhaling into the air. An airplane takes off, roaring as it reaches for the night sky. “It’s as good as new.”

  “Do you expect me to thank you?” she answers with an edge to her tone. “Don’t hold your breath. Better yet, hold it.”

  “Please,” I reply, unable to keep the corner of my mouth from curving. “Please, come home.”

  “No.”

  “Ella?” I say, tossing my cigarette into the street before I go back inside the airport.

  “What?”

  “Then I’m coming for you.”

  Sever

  (Closer #2)

  Early 2017

  Mary Elizabeth is an up and coming author who finds words in chaos, writing stories about the skeletons hanging in your closets.

  Known as The Realist, Mary was born and raised in Southern California. She is a wife, mother of four beautiful children, and dog tamer to one enthusiastic Pit Bull and a prissy Chihuahua. She’s a hairstylist by day but contemporary fiction, new adult author by night. Mary can often be found finger twirling her hair and chewing on a stick of licorice while writing and rewriting a sentence over and over until it’s perfect. She discovered her talent for tale-telling accidentally, but literature is in her chokehold. And she’s not letting go until every story is told.

  Follow Mary on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and her blog, Mary Elizabeth Literature.

  You can also sign up for her newsletter for up-to-date information on her 2017 book releases, including Sever (Closer #2), and the final installment of the Closer Trilogy, Crawl.

  “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.”—Jeremiah 17:9

  This series is ten years in the making. There’s no way to thank every single solitary person who in some way, somehow helped me turn this dream into a reality. But I made a li
st.

  My husband. My children. My family. My animals. As always, thank you for your support and dedication to my craft. Thank you for allowing me to lose myself in these alternate universes I create quietly in my mind. If it were not for you, none of this would be possible.

  Catherine Jones. Thank you for taking another ride with me. You are essential to my success. You are the voice of reason.

  Amber Sachs. Thank you for helping me bring Teller and Ella to life. I couldn’t have done this without you.

  Sunny Borek. I wish there was a GIF I can insert here to show my gratitude for EVERYTHING you have done for me. From Low, to San Francisco, to Las Vegas, and thousands upon thousands of messages, I literally wouldn’t be the author I am today without you. And above all, thank you for being my friend.

  EK. Thank you for being the extrovert to my introvert.

  Paige Smith. Another one in the bag!

  Hang Le. Thank you for making my covers works of art.

  Mara White. Thank you for believing in me.

  Ellie McLove. #squad

  SM: Your words changed my life in ways I never imagined for myself, and in ways you’ll never know. Thank you for existing. Thank you for dreaming.

  E & B: The originals.

  And of course, to my readers. Thank you for wanting this as badly as I do.