One
ATLAS
“It’s not me.It’s you.”
The words struck me as odd. As wrong, which was strange because he said that shit to me all the time to try and get under my skin. But I realized that wasn’t the problem. The problem was, I was supposed to be saying it. Those were the words meant to leave my lips because I wasn’t the fucking problem here and never had been.
It’s notmeRaleigh, it’syou.
It was him—him and his fucked-up, warped sense of love.
Him and his narcissistic affection that left me chasing crumbs when he felt like I was reaching the end of my tolerance for his bullshit.
Him and his years and years of affairs he somehow convinced me to forgive him for. And nowhewas dumpingme?
The laugh bubbled up before I could stop it. The profound look of disbelief on my face was wide and in the open before I could tuck it behind apathy. “Grey-rock him,” my therapist had told me. If I wanted to manage his attempts to emotionally manipulate me, I had to learn to grey-rock.
But I wasn’t good at that. To do what I had to do, I had to be aware and in touch with my emotions at all times.
I was a musician. A lyricist. A fucking performer.
I always had been.
I hadn’t realized that becoming the main fucking entrée in the bullshit world of being famous would come with a side dish of constantly being scrutinized and told that I was somehow too much and too little for him to love me back the way I wanted to be loved.
But the fact remained: I was who I was.
I couldn’t hide it.
And Raleigh was going to take full advantage of that now.
“I’ve outgrown you.” He smiled when he said those words, knowing they’d hurt. And maybe I flinched, I don’t know, but his grin got a little meaner.
Something in me snapped, and the pain I’d been keeping under wraps was bubbling to the surface. I felt panicked for a second because I didn’t want him to know, but I couldn’t hide it anymore. There was an intense sense of desperation in me to be able to draw out even the smallest bit of empathy from him. To prove that I hadn’t wasted all these years with a soulless monster who didn’t give two fucks about me.
But I knew the truth the moment our eyes met and I could see he was high on knowing he was causing me pain. His pupils were wide, consuming all of his irises. He was getting off on this.
“You have really shit timing,” I muttered in spite of knowing that more words would only make this worse.
I don’t know why I pulled up my calendar and looked at the date, like somehow he would care. Like I could point out it was Christmas Eve and he’d have a change of heart. I wanted to ask him why he couldn’t dig deep into the hollow aluminum lump in his chest that cosplayed as a fucking heart and not do this to me right now.
But if I did that, it would only give him more ways to hurt me, so my logic kicked in, and I took a breath before responding.
“Fine.” That’s all I could give. That’s all I had left in me.
He sighed and reached out to cup my cheek the way he always did when he was trying to get his way, but I yanked my head back from him. He looked different to me suddenly. He wasn’t the man I’d been fucking and—against everyone’s better judgment—falling in love with since we were two dipshits playing rush week parties on our college campus.
Now he looked…older. Worn. Like a man desperately trying to cling to his youth, and I was simply a reminder that we couldn’t move backward in time. The guy I’d caught him with this time—the fresh-faced, mesh-wearing groupie—could probably make him feel something.
He could most certainly be more athletic and acrobatic in bed than I was. I wasn’t old enough for age-related arthritis yet, but my bones were tired from years on the road.
I wasn’t new anymore.
I wasn’t as pretty as I used to be.
And I was content in that.
I laughed in his face as I dodged his second attempt to touch me, and he reared back.
