“You can come stay with me, if you want,” Marissa offers, and I take a shaky breath.
“Sure. Sounds good.”
“Okay, Row. Call me if you need anything, okay?”
“Alright. Bye.”
I end the call, and I feel no better than I did before. But the aggressive sobbing has stopped, and I only slightly feel like I need to puke.
Could I survive like this? If these two months end and I flee from this town, will I be able to survive only on photos and dreams of him?
No. I need Elijah in the flesh if I want to be happy.
I want to go to his job, to his apartment, to anywhere he could possibly be to hunt him down and force him to listen to me. But I fear he really will call the police on me, and I have no time for sitting in a jail cell.
So instead, I call his phone.
I’m sent straight to voicemail.
“Elijah, please. Call me back; let me explain. I know I don’t deserve the chance, but I’m already going crazy not speaking to you. Please… if you’ve ever trusted me, trust me now.Please.”
My sweet little angel has flown on without me, and I can do nothing but accept it.
I’m fucked.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Elijah
Iam alone. I’ve spent an entire day and an entire night surrounded by my own sorrow and this burning, hot ache in my chest.
The only company I’ve allowed for is the singular call where I informed John I would not be coming back into the office yesterday, and my own shadow as it swallows me whole.
I have nothing left. Right as everything in my life seemed to fit together seamlessly, it all fell apart. In one instant, my happiness was torn from my trembling hands.
I am falling apart; I am a feather just now reaching the concrete—a slow, torturous fall. A soft crash. And it’s miserable.
That radar inside of me that is supposed to read others and make me inclined to trust or to distrust—I think it is broken. I thinkImay be broken.
I really thought Rowan was different. Taking the overwhelming emotion I felt, I bet on him and our time together with everything I had.
I should have trusted my instincts. I should have fucking run the moment I spent an entire night sobbing in his bed. But instead, I lowered my defenses and let him completely inside.
And now, as I stare at my reflection that is tainted by his attempt to claim me, I realize he got exactly what he wanted. I can no longer see myself without thinking of him.
Rowan lives in my skin—the very sight of my blood is a tribute to him and our time together.
How am I meant to live with this? How am I meant to take this mark and carry on, to not crumble to pieces every time I lay my eyes upon it? Maybe that was the purpose. Maybe it had nothing to do with love and everything to do with strategically planned psychological warfare.
This bullshit about being in love in the past, and him dreaming of me, is cruel and twisted. A new brand of torture that I’m unfamiliar with.
I wish we’d never met. I wish this heart of mine had never started beating.
Yet even through all of this pain and regret, I find myself craving him. I yearn for him the same way I yearned for him while he was inside of me, while I waited for his next message, or as he drove away from my house in the morning.
And it’s sick and twisted and so cruel to myself, but I cannot stop.
Rowan was right about one thing: my body is programmed to miss his. And whether that was an intentional, tactical move onhis end or the natural progression of my attraction toward him, I am very certain it has nothing to do with fate or a previous love.
