It was over. I had waited too long, and I had messed up everything. Now all I could do was hold onto my dignity.
“That’s what you call what happened with us?” Pin asked, eyes widening. “It justgot out of hand?”
I flinched. It wasn’t what I had meant to say, but I mentally injected steel into my spine. I would not back down from him. I put a tight leash on my emotions.
“You won’t listen to me, so I don’t have to explain myself,” I said. “I already told you I didn’t fake things with you and last night was real.”
“Don’t fucking talk about last night,” Pin said.
He turned around and gripped the table. I stood still as he took several deep breaths. When he turned around, it seemed as if he had calmed down. He had shoved all his pain into some deep corner. I felt awful that I had been the cause of this. I had hurt him so badly that he was lashing out, like a wounded animal.
After he had been so hesitant to trust anyone. After he had feared how anyone who got close would betray him. I did feel bad. But I was angry at him too. He wasn’t even trying to see my side.
“I just got hired for a job,” I said. “They told me to look into Outlaw Souls, and I did it. It’s not personal.”
I regretted the last sentence as soon as it left my mouth.
First of all, it was a lie. The case had gotten personal almost the second I had heard about it. I hated that I was lying to him again, even after he had accused me of being a liar, and I had denied it.
“You’re a cold-hearted bitch,” Pin said. “You really are.”
My heart shattered in two. But I couldn’t show it. What right did I have to a broken heart? I was the villain here. The bitch. The whore. The heartless slut.
I blinked rapidly and pressed my lips. “Get out of my apartment.”
Pin stepped back and opened his mouth. He probably had more to say. More cruel things to yell at me or more horrible names. I didn’t care. I wanted him to leave. I couldn’t draw this whole ordeal out any longer.
“Stop looking into Outlaw Souls,” Pin said. “Don’t even come near us.”
I scoffed and rolled my eyes. I had just lost him, I wasn’t going to give up my job as well. “You know I have to continue with this case.”
“No, you don’t,” Pin said. “And we havenothingto do with those missing kids.”
“That may be true,” I said. “But I have to keep looking.”
For a second, I thought he was going to yell again. I braced myself for his shouting. Instead, he turned on his heel and stomped over to the couch. I stood stock-still as he grabbed his jacket and boots. He didn’t even put his shoes on. He just headed for the door, as if he couldn’t stand one more second in my presence.
I looked away as he slammed my door shut behind him. I didn’t want to see him leave. I was going to have to live the rest of my life with this memory, and it was already bad enough.
As soon as he was gone, my legs gave out. I crumbled onto the floor and clutched my knees to my chest as great heaving sobs erupted from my chest. All the tears I had held in came pouring down my face. I hadn’t cried this hard for as long as I could remember, if ever.
Maybe I had cried like this when I was little and fell off my bike, but I couldn’t remember it being this painful. This was a level of hurt I’d never known before. Because my heart was being ripped out of my chest. The beautiful future I had dared to dream of was crumbling before my own eyes, and it was all my fault.
That was the worst part. If someone else had been to blame, if Pin had done something wrong, and I had ended up losing him, I would still cry. But it wouldn’t be as horrible. I could still point my finger at someone else and plot revenge on someone else.
But how was I supposed to get revenge on myself?
I knew the answer as soon as I posed the question. Living with the mistakes I had made, living my life without Pin, always wondering what could have been, was going to be punishment enough. I had told lies before. I had always justified them. They were for the greater good, or lies of politeness, or even for survival. Nothing bad had ever happened, so I just kept lying. I carried deception around with me like a shield and weapon all in one.
Now it has all caught up to me. Every little white lie, every day I had spent pretending to be someone other than who I was, I was paying for all that now.
I sat on the floor of my apartment for almost an hour, as tears poured down my face in an unpausing river. I gasped for breath and blew my nose in my shirt and patted my face dry, but the tears just kept coming.
At one point, I thought I heard footsteps in the hall. I thought he was coming back, maybe to listen, maybe to tell me that he knew I had messed up, but he believed me that I hadn’t been faking my feelings.
But it was all in my head. He wasn’t coming back. After I realized that, I cried even harder.
He was never going to believe that the night before had been anything but a twisted manipulation. He was never going to see that I hadn’t been making a desperate play for information. And on top of using him, I had insulted the one thing he cared about above all else, the Outlaw Souls.
