Somehow, I’m still a step behind him, following his trail like a mad man. I let an average man somehow get out of my grasp. Soon enough, I’ll catch up and have him in my palm, squirming and begging for the freedom he will never get.
I called in a favor to Lannister, asking him to have his men watch over Sunny’s parents. He owed me for saving his daughter, anyways.
How can you blame me? Love made me fucking crazy. I’ll do anything to protect the ones I love. Sunny should’ve known that by now.
I’m usually able to find even the hardest of hunts in a matter of weeks. Yet I’ve spent months trying to find him, and I’m always somehow a step behind him. I didn’t give him the credit he deserves. I underestimated him. He doesn’t seem to have a rhythm or rhyme to his travels. It’s all sporadic chaos. There’s no pattern for me to follow. Nothing to track and get answers to.
The last known location I had on him was on the opposite end of the country. I’m trying to keep up while managing my life here. It was hard keeping this from her, but it needed to be done.
How could she expect me to not hunt down the one thing that was keeping us from being together? The one thing threatening her safety.
Her life.
It’d be the only promise I’d ever break to her. But it needed to be done because her safety is my priority, even if it means she’d hate me forever. Even if it means that we won’t be together. Even if she still left and lived a life that isn’t here, with me, with us.
At least she could still live a life free of her abuser. Free from him. And I’d be okay with that. I would have to be.
I won’t stop looking even after she leaves. Of course I fucking won’t.
I hoped,I hopedwe’d find him before she left. Then she could stay. And yes, I felt awful for breaking my promise to her.But I’d feel even worse knowing I sat back and did absolutely nothing.
“Yes, okay?! I broke my promise. I broke it because I broke, Sunny.I fucking broke,” I yell.
My voice doesn’t even sound like my own. This is the sound of a man crumpling. A man so desperate to cling to the one thing that’s finally made me feel alive. The one thing that gave me light and life in death and darkness.
Just as the moon cannot glow without the sun, I cannot live without her. She is my sun. And I am the moon, so desperate to keep her light I didn’t think existed, shining through my darkness.
“So this whole time.” She shakes her head as tears stream down her face. “It was all a lie. The promise was broken before it was even made. The way you reacted at the campaign was…fake because you already knew. You already knew the real parts of me, while I clearly knew nothing about you.” Her anger rises through her words.
“You’ve hid things too, Sunny. Let the campaign be clear of that,” I remind her.
“Because that version of me, she was dead, Tyler! She was dead!”
My hands tighten on her face. “I can’t do this, Sunny. I can’t say goodbye. How can I let go of this beautiful, wonderful thing that has come into my life?” I choke, grappling onto this in desperate hope. “That has made it so much better. That gave me light in a time when darkness was all that consumed me? How can you expect me to just let you go while he is still out there? How do you expect me to let you go at all?”
Her shoulders shudder with her cries. She won’t look at me. That’s when I see it. The woman I’ll never stop loving is falling out of love with me.
I feel her fucking slipping. I had all of her and now I’m about to have none of her. Losing her is losing a part of me. I had a lifebefore her, and I had a life with her, but I can’t ever imagine a life after her.
It wouldn’t be living at all.
“Just stay with me, okay? Just stay with me. You know now, you know and we can use all of this. We can go to my lawyers, we can do whatever you want, baby. I’ll stop my hunt. I’ll stop it if it means you’ll take their help. Whatever you ask I can make it happen for you. We can give you a life, Sunny, a life here.”
I’m not sorry. I won’t deny her right to be angry, either. I’d broken a promise to a girl who barely had any trust left after someone else had broken it.
But there would not be a world where I’d let her live in fear when there was something I could do about it.
Even if it meant losing her in the process.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-NINE
SUNNY
I can’t keep watchingthis. Watching himbeglike this. Watching that small sliver of hope hang between us. Watching a predator crumble at my feet. Watch a man shatter from the inside out.
I need to bring the anger back.
“You did this, Tyler, you did this!” I remove myself from him. “Why is it so hard to just ask you to be a good person? Just for this? You say you’ll handle it my way but you haven’t this whole time! I actually thought you respected me enough to stay true to your promises.You can’t. That’s reason enough for me to leave. I was a stupid fucking girl to think I could derail it for a guy. I’ve never questioned you or what you do or who you are. I was never afraid of you. But now I’m starting to think I should be.”
