“Don’t fucking touch me, Embyr!” I shout, gently shoving her away from me. Turning to my bag, I open it up and pull the package Ian sent to me. My next words come out harsh. “Or should I call you Annie?”
Embyr moves without hesitation, running into the kitchen, shattering a glass in her haste to grab some water. This must be the result of her many panic attacks. She leaves the glass on the floor and fills another one, gulping every ounce of it down. I stand there, watching her get caught up in her web of lies.
She turns to me, her knuckles white as she tightly grips the glass. “Casen.”
I stick my finger toward her in warning. “Don’t you say a fucking word! Not one word.”
“You have to let me explain.” She begs, side-stepping the shattered remains of the glass. It reminds me of my heart – shattered.
I toss the envelope her way. “Explain what? Explain all of that? I highly doubt you can dig yourself out of this hole.”
“I was going to tell you, I promise.” She pleads.
“When? WHEN? After I fell in love with you?” I shake my head in disbelief. “Well too fucking late. I did.” My feet move, but I’m too angry to know what I’m doing. Memories of the past few weeks, our talks, our dates, the sex, flash through my mind. I don’t understand her at all. “Was this all a game to you?”
She attempts to get me to take a seat but I’m too heated for it. “If we could just sit down and talk I can tell you everything. From Patrick to Evan. I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”
What? Patrick and Evan. Why even bring that up? Unless… “Did you do that to them? Did you set them up?”
Her face pales. “Yes, but please. Let’s sit down.”
I stalk toward her, getting right in her face. This is much deeper than I thought it was. “Yes? Did you fuck over Thad and Wesley too? Is that why Wesley is suspected in setting the fire here?
“Wesley?”
“Yeah, Wesley. My friend at the station told me he is a suspect. Care to tell me why?”
She flops back down into her chair. “I was blackmailing him. He was seducing a student.”
Rage consumes me. I can’t control my anger much longer. “Un-fucking-believable! So, all that shit? It was all your doing? This is so much more fucked up than I thought.”
“I’m sorry.” Embyr starts to lose control of her tears. Her skirt suit wrinkles in the process of her breakdown. I don’t care. I just can’t process any of this right now.
Walking back over, I upend the opened bag and dump its contents out. “Here is your shit. I don’t want it tainting my house.”
“Casen. Let’s please talk.” Her cries are now racking her whole body.
“Do you know how much of a mind fuck it is to get home and have a letter from the best friend who just fucking died in your mailbox? Then open it up and find out the girl who you wanted to contact for years, the one you wanted to make amends with for all the shitty things she went through in high school, was right under your fucking tongue the night before. To find out the woman you love, who has been underneath you and beside you, has been lying to you for weeks now? The first person I opened up to.”
Her green eyes are drowning in shame. “I was going to tell you.”
“When, Embyr? When were you going to tell me? When I told you about what our friends did to you in high school.” The next words gut me to the core when I say them. “When we got married? After our first child or our second because Lord fucking knows I could see myself marrying you.”
I could see it. See her walking down the aisle dressed in all white but that vision is now jaded. All I see is red.
“We can still have that, Casen.” She pursues me, but I thwart her. “We can get through the hurt of Ian and of what I did and move on. Move past it. I’ll do anything I can to make it up to you.”
My stomach tightens with nausea. Oh my God! “Did you have something to do with Ian getting shot?”
Her eyes open wide in shock. “No! How could you even think I would do something like that?”
“Because I don’t fucking know you or what the fuck you are capable of!” I yell. “You set out on this revenge scheme and who the hell knows what you had on the agenda for Ian, Reece, and me. Though I believe breaking my fucking heart into a million pieces would have done me in…isdoing me in.”
She continues to beg me. “Can we just start over, please?”
Deflated, I tell her, “Go get my stuff out of your room. I need to go. Ian’s parents are waiting for us at his apartment.”
She leaves me in her living room and I pace back and forth waiting for her to come back. I shake my head, commenting to myself how I’m never going to see the inside of this place again. The balcony where I made her come for the first time. The couch we nestled up to one another while we watched a movie. The place where I thought I fell in love with her. I’ll never see it again and that thought burns my soul. It shakes me, scares me to think that I won’t be with her anymore. I just can’t process all of it and then I turn to find a picture of us in a small four by six frame. We took it the night of Ian’s birthday party. I pick it up and allow a tear to fall down the side of my face. I wipe it away, torn between the moment it held and the betrayal behind it. I still love her, but I can’t trust her. She’s lost me. We’ve lost each other.
A crash in her room alerts me, and I’m annoyed with how long it takes to grab the menial number of things I’ve left here. I call her name out, frustrated.
When she doesn’t answer me, I walk back toward her room and find her crumpled up on her bathroom floor, my stuff scattered around her.
“Look at me.” I command her but she doesn’t comply.
Fuck this.
I reach down, grasping her chin between my fingertips. Her eyes are filled with black tears and for a moment I feel as though I might regret this. I can’t let this go though. I’m torn between what I know I need to do and what my heart wants me to do. My anger wins out. “Never mind. I don’t want my stuff. It’s tainted. Don’t you ever come near me ever again.” And then my love for her breaks through. I kiss her gently on the forehead, my lips burning in the process and I leave her on the floor.
I’ve lost two people today. One was taken, the other was by their choice.
