I can’t manage to look at her any longer as the first sobs shake her body, so I stand to turn away like a fucking coward.
"We’re too different. Don’t you see that? We’re as different as day and night."
When she sucks in a breath, I brace myself for what she’s about to say because I already know it will kill me. And Sophie doesn’t disappoint me.
"But day and night belong together," she chokes out softly. "They can’t be without each other."
Fuck. This is so hard. I didn’t think it would be this hard. But Ihaveto do it. It’s too dangerous for her to stay with me. And I’m not even able to do it. I can’t pretend to be Prince Charming all of a sudden. I’m justnot. I’m Cole Walker, a fucked-up scumbag who’d rather get the living shit beaten out of him than lie on a therapist’s couch. I’m a bastard who banged a girl who’s been locked up by her mother for seventeen years after only six days. I’m an asshole who lets her get in the line of fire of an underground fight club boss who has no scruples when he wants something.
No. She can’t stay with me.
"We’renothing, Sophie. And we surely don’t belong together."
I should have had a drink before this, I think to myself before I hear her voice again.
"You don’t mean that." It’s just a whisper, yet every single syllable hurts more than all the punches I’ve taken from Steve and his guys.
"I mean itexactlylike that," I reply harshly, the words like acid in my mouth.
"You’re lying."
I lower my head as I feel the last tiny spark inside me go out. "You can tell yourself that, but it won’t change the facts. You have to go. I can’t have you with me anymore. I don’twantyou with me anymore."
When I hear her footsteps behind me, everything in me wants to turn around because it pulls my body toward hers, but I don’t dare move. My fear of what Sophie’s sight might do to me is too great.
"Then say that?—"
She pauses, sniffles, and tries to gather herself. I can see it. In my mind, I can picture exactly how she furrows her brows and then lifts her chin almost defiantly.
"Tell me you don’t feel it too," she demands in a trembling voice.
Shit. I can’t do this. I just fucking can’t…
"Look me in the eye and say that you don’t feel anything for me."
As if in slow motion, I turn around and open my eyes. Sophie is standing just a few feet away from me. Her face is red and wet from her tears. The pleading in her gaze almost brings me to my knees, but I just look back blankly as I answer her. "I don’t feel anything for you. Never have. Everything I said was a lie."
Something inside her shatters. I see it in those clear, pure amber eyes that are always full of kindness and want to see only the good in everyone—even in me. I see her questioning everything that has happened between us, and at the same time realizing that it’s lost. And it’s better that way. I want her to believe that there’s nothing. Shehastobelieve the lie. Otherwise, she won’t be able to let me go.
Because that’s what it was. It was the biggest lie that had ever come out of anyone’s mouth. Never in my life has anything been so damn hard. Never has anything I’ve said caused me such pain.
But I had to do it. For her.
FORTY-ONE
SOPHIE
Cole’s voice reaches my ears, and when I finally manage to break the words down into their smallest pieces and then put them back together, the ground threatens to give way beneath me.
Everything I said was a lie.
It cannot be true. Itmust notbetrue. But I know it is. I see it in his eyes. He doesn’t want me. It was all a lie. His words. His actions. Even his touches. It was allfake.
I was so stupid believing he would feel the same as me. I gave him the most precious thing I had, made him do things I will never forget, and all because I thought he felt something for me. I gave him my heart, but instead of protecting it, he threw it on the ground where it shattered into a thousand pieces.
I sink into a haze of disbelief and all-consuming emptiness until Cole’s voice finds me again. Blinking, I try to orient myself, and my gaze falls on a police station at the end of the street.
"I’ll let you out here. Then you can decide where you want to go," he says flatly.
