“If you think that, then you don’t actually know me.”
“I don’t. Not anymore,” Ty grumbles.
I don’t know me either.
Instead of showing him how much that hurt, I flip a switch and smirk seductively.
“Do you want to?”
Ty’s expression softens, confused and steady, but he sits back like the switch was too abrupt. Too obvious.
Warning bells go off in my head.Not good, Roxie, not good.
“I want to know the girl that left me behind. I want to knowher, how she grew, what she wants, how she is. Not…not this skin you just slipped into.”
My heart drops to my stomach, but deep inside, that fifteen-year-old girl that voluntarily got into that car so the boy I felt something for wouldn’t have to see the hurt, rejoices. Hesees me. Hewants me.
“Fuck you,” I snap, throwing the words out to protect myself. To protect him. Mickey isn’t understanding. He’s not going to spare me just because Ty asks him to.
“Hm,” he looks at me with a look that makes me slightly uneasy. But instead of pushing me on this front, he pushes me on another. “Why didn’t you respond to my emails?”
I sigh. “So we’re getting into this right now?”
“Right the fuck now, Rox.”
I want to run my hands through my hair or cross my arms over my chest defensively. Something, anything to defuse the tension. There’s a hard set to his jaw, and an edge in his eyes that tells me I’m not getting out of this. That he’s not going to let me hide.
“Can you not just let me rest? I just took a beating and I’m hurting, probably have a concussion and here you are, interrogating me.”
Ty leans forward, leaning his elbows on his knees to get closer to me.
“Tell me, Roxie.”
I want to scream at him, rage to leave me alone, but when I look at him with the fire in my eyes I see him.My Ty. The fifteen-year-old that gave me my first kiss and held me through the night because he knew I was devastated.
The one who looked wrecked when I left.
“It took me a little bit to get situated,” I say softly, each word being ripped from my chest, one painful memory at a time. “I… I got there and it wasn’t like with Tom and Becky. I wasn’t… I wasn’t considered a child or a guest. I was an unwelcome by-product of something they wanted. The checks. I pushed, I mouthed off, I… I challenged, and I quickly found out the consequences of doing so. When I got enough money, I was forced to choose; internet or eating, and eating usually won out.” I swallow the lump in my throat, and Ty’s fingers slowly curl into fists on his knees as he listens. “I saved up enough to be able to get to the library and access it, and I saw them… All your beautiful, amazing emails. All letters to me. For me.” My breath hitches. I still remember thejoyI felt in the hell I was living because the boy I liked, liked me back.
“You’d written, over and over. And without fail. I… I was amazed.You stayed,when everyone else left. And then I started to think about how much you had going for you here. I know back then that you were supporting your family and were working and stressed, and I’m sure you’re still stressed and working and all that because that’s therealshit that we have to do. But I then thought about what if you had someone else creeping in. What if another girl or guy, or whoever, started giving you the attention you needed and I couldn’t give to you? It took me months to be able to even access the emails. What if you… What if someone else could be there for you in the way that I couldn’t, but the way you needed? I couldn’t take that from you. I couldn’t put my own selfish wants above what would be best foryou.”
My heart aches. I’ve never forced myself to speak it out loud, but I knew the moment I saw the emails what I had to do. For him.
It hurt like I’d ripped my own heart out of my chest, but then I’d remember how much I could feel every bit of his care.Ty wouldn’t say a whole lot, but his actions always spoke louder than words.
There was no doubt that he’d find someone, or someone would find him and he’d fall for them.
“You what?” he growls, the words vibrating from his chest so loudly I can feel them from here.
“What?”
“You’re going to sit here and tell me that you left, and then youleft,because you thought it was best for me?” There’s a difference in his words, and I understand what he’s saying. Out of all the things I imagined, I did not think he was going to be this mad.
“I was trying—” I say but he cuts me off and his voice booms.
“You’re saying that you left me alone,for me?” He scoffs, and anger is fuming out of him like exhaust. “Are you fucking serious, Roxie? You’re telling me that you did all this, you put all this fucking space here, you tore me to pieces,for me? I can’t fucking believe this.” Ty pushes up to standing and takes two steps away before turning on his heel and gripping the chair he was sitting in aggressively.
“How dare you,” he growls. “How fucking dare you.”
