“Thisisme fighting, goddamn it!” I bark, pushing off the wall. “I will never stop fighting for her! She’s my ride or die too, and it will always be her for me. If Stevie won’t make the call, I’ll make it for her. She’s tearing herself apart trying to please both of us, and one of us has to be man enough to walk away.”
* * *
Stevie calls me after a week of tearful calls and messages, begging me to reconsider. When I tell her I can’t, she says she can’t choose. Hurt crashes into me. I suspected it would come to this, but hearing her tell me she can’t prioritize us devastates me. I haven’t felt this much pain since my mom died. I tell Stevie I will always love her, but I cannot do this anymore, and then I hang up.
I walk around my apartment with a sharp pain in my heart and a tightness in my chest, packing up all her stuff. When the courier arrives to collect the box, I hand it to the guy without a word. Then I crawl into bed and cry.
ChapterSeventy-Nine
Stevie
“Iknow something that’ll cheer you up,” Garrick says when we come back to his room after a stroll outside. Apart from that one run-in with Ivy, I haven’t seen her at all, thankfully. I’m still working on Garrick, trying to convince him to forgive his dad and move to North Bend. Helena and Hudson are working on him too, and I’m confident between the three of us we will get him to change his mind. Sooner rather than later, I hope.
It's been two weeks since Beck sent me a box of my belongings and broke things off with me. I thought my heart was shattered before, but it’s nothing compared to how I feel now. I am a walking zombie, and all that’s left of the organ in my chest is bloody, mangled shreds. I cry myself to sleep every night, constantly second-guessing myself and wondering if I did the right thing. But how can I walk away from Garrick? I can’t abandon him. I just can’t. So I have no choice but to let Beck go even though it has crushed me.
“I’ve been practicing,” Garrick says, lifting his guitar onto his lap, and my stomach lurches to my toes.
Which is really fucking mean because it’s incredible he’s able to do this only three months after coming out of a coma. I sit on a chair, already knowing this is going to destroy me. An ominous sense of dread washes over me as he tunes the guitar, flashes me one of his trademark smiles, dimples and all, and gets ready to play. His hair has grown long again, and he looks more like the Garrick I remember.
Nostalgia floods the room as he plucks the strings. Sadness and pain are my constant companions these days, and never more so than now. It’s almost like returning to the past, seeing Garrick looking like himself, happy with a guitar on his lap as he serenades me.
He’s a bit out of sync at the start, but he quickly finds his rhythm.
All the color drains from my face when he starts singing “Only Yesterday.” Oh god. I think I’m going to be sick. Visions of the night I cried in Beck’s arms as we danced to The Carpenters surges to the forefront of my mind, and a sob pushes out of my mouth. That night, I asked Beck to play this song for him. I wanted the words to comfort him. To let Beck know how much he had done for me. How much he had given me to live for, and it’s too painful to listen to Garrick play this now for me, conveying a very different message with the same words.
“Stop! Please.” Tears roll down my face as I hop up from my chair and wrap my arms around my waist.
“Baby, what’s wrong?” Garrick wheels toward me with concern in his eyes and his guitar on his lap.
“I can’t listen to that song.” I brush the tears away, hating how much I’m still crying. I’m like one of those weak heroines you read about in books who cries at the drop of a hat. “It makes me really sad.” I don’t want to admit why because he’s liable to fly off the handle. His erratic mood swings give me whiplash on good days, but anything Beck related brings out a cruel irrational side of his personality, so I try to avoid mentioning my ex.
“Shit.” Garrick takes my wrist, rubbing the tattoo we share. “I didn’t stop to think. I know you played those songs for me all the time. I didn’t think how sad they would have made you.”
I don’t correct him.
A familiar scowl appears on his face, and I’m instantly on high alert. Garrick fingers my charm bracelet. “Why are you still wearing this?” he asks in a voice devoid of any warmth.
I snatch my hand back, fearful he’ll break it because he’s got an evil glint in his eyes I’ve grown accustomed to.
“Answer me!” he snaps, glaring at me. “Why are you still wearing his bracelet when you refuse to wear the poppy ring I gave you?”
“I wear your locket,” I remind him, lifting it from my neck to confirm it.
“Then you can put my ring back on.” He arches his neck to look up at me.
“I can’t. It’s from the past when we were together. That’s not our relationship these days. I wear this locket because you gave it to me as a friend.”
“Baby, you know I’m going to win you back. We started out as friends before, and it developed into more. It’s going to happen again. I’m glad he’s gone so we can get back on track, but you’ve got to lose the bracelet, Stevie. It hurts me to see it on your wrist. It’s contaminating our tattoo.”
I didn’t plan on telling Garrick Beck and I had broken up because I knew it’d fill him with false hope. But Ivy discovered the truth, and she told him. I didn’t believe it at first because surely it suited her that I had a boyfriend and was relegating her son to the friend zone? However, it seems she tried to put a self-serving spin on it. She claimed Beck had seen me for the conniving gold-digging slut I am and he’d kicked me to the curb. She told Garrick he needed to do the same. It backfired massively because it’s only made Garrick more determined to win me back. And made the entire situation more stressful for me.
Even though I risk starting World War Three, I can’t let that go without a response. I steel my spine and draw a brave breath. “I’m wearing it because I love him.”
“He left you!” he shouts.
“Because I was hurting him. Not because we don’t love one another.”
“He doesn’t love you like I do! I would never leave you. Never!”
