No. Not her. Not now.
THIRTY-SEVEN
My body goes cold. An ache stabs at my heart, cutting straight through me, and likethat,the moment’s gone. Despair settles in my stomach, carving out an endless pit as I realize we might never get it back. Because the caller is worse than Penny or any of the girls at the club.
I sit up. I push him away. I cover myself. I retreat.
“What’s wrong?” Landon asks, breathless. “Are you okay? Did I hurt you?” I swing my legs over the side of the bed, my stomach in knots. I can’t look at him. “Violet?”
“Your phone,” I say shakily. He pauses, and then reaches toward the nightstand, glancing down at the screen. I watch his body tense up and shut down. I’m not sure what I expect him to do or say, but I know that whatever it is is about to shatter me. “Why is my sister calling you? You guys are broken up…aren’t you?”
When he looks back at me, he’s different, and all that passion, heat, and affection from moments before is gone. Instead, there’s an anxious set to his mouth, a deep pain in his eyes, and an overall aura of regret. “It’s not what it looks like,” he says slowly.
I swallow, wondering if this is a dream. Or a nightmare. “It looks like you’re still involved with Mel.”
“She’s not…it’s not…fuck.” He shakes his head before staring blankly across the room. “It will never be over,” he mutters to himself. “I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking.”
“What will never be over?” I ask, but my voice sounds far away. “What the fuck is going on, Landon? You broke up, didn’t you? She moved out?”
His shoulders droop, and he shakes his head, jaw tensing.
I don’t understand his body language right now. It seems contradictory all over.
The next words are some of the hardest I’ve ever spoken.
“You’re…you’re still into her, then?” I breathe.
His head snaps up. “No,” he says, with a vehemence that confuses me. “It’s not like that. Like I said, it’s really fucking complicated, Violet.”
“Complicated,” I repeat, crossing my arms over my chest. “How? It seems simple to me. She was blackmailing you, you broke up with her, she moved away and cut us out of her life. So why is she calling you this late at night?” He doesn’t respond. “Are you guys, like, talking again?”
His brows draw together, and the pain in his eyes is evident. “We’ll always be talking, Violet. That’s the problem.”
I repeat his words over in my head, trying to understand. Trying to decode them, because it feels like he’s speaking in riddles, presenting me with half-truths and lies and expecting me to read between the lines.
“I don’t understand,” I tell him. I thought they’d cut ties, otherwise, I never would have kissed him. I never would have fallen for him. I never would havedreamedof it.
“I know,” he says. “But if I told you everything, you’d never look at me the same, and I’d rather you hate me than pity me.”
My heart rate speeds up when I hear the raw emotion in his voice. The despair, the misery, the anguish. It’s written all over him, in his deep frown, his hopeless eyes, his hunched shoulders. I want to hug him, help him, fix him, but how can I fix anything when I don’t know the cause? How can I find a solution when he won’t tell me the problem?
How can I trust him when he won’t tell me the truth?
“What are you talking about?” I ask. “Wait, what are you doing?” Panic sets in as he starts to pull on his sweatshirt. He moves around the room, collecting any stray belongings and shoving them back into his suitcase before zipping it shut. “Landon, stop. Landon, where are you going?”
He doesn’t look at me when he says, “I should have requested the second room tonight. This is my fault.”
I scramble off the bed, reaching for his arm. “Landon, please. You can tell me anything.”
He shakes his head, squares his shoulders, and looks at me. The shield is up again, and I can’t get a read on him. Every emotion, thought, and feeling is boarded up, secured behind his blank face and shuttered eyes.
“I’m sorry, Violet,” he says, his voice dispassionate at best. “I fucked up. Again.”
My throat thickens, and tears prick my eyes. I blink, blink, blink them back.
“Landon,” I whisper. “Please.”
But he doesn’t respond. He looks away, turns away, walks away. He leaves me alone in the hotel room, crushed and more confused than ever.
