I should’ve. But for some reason, I lingered.
“I leave you out here all alone, in the dark…” He gestured into the darkness, his joint leaving a wisp of smoke and sparks in the air. “What kind of man would that make me?”
I wanted to tell him that I knew exactly what kind of man he was. But the words got choked up in my throat.
You kissed him.
It was sinking in, like teeth ripping into my heart. I cleared my throat and turned, forcing myself to walk back to the house as my body flushed with heat. And with hunger.
Guilt.
Shame.
“Good night, Angel,” he breathed behind me, and a shiver ran down my back. I could hear the whisper of gratification beneath his words, and something strangely sad.
And for some reason, I felt bad about leaving him standing there all alone, in the dark. But I didn’t turn back as my insides churned, my emotions still reeling in a chaotic tumult as the world spun around me, upside down and inside out.
You kissed him and you loved it.
In one sudden, unexpected moment, the entire trajectory of my life had subtly changed. Though I wouldn’t know it until later.
I wouldn’t say that it was that single, broken kiss that ended my relationship with my boyfriend, Flynn.
But I would say it was the spark that lit the fire, that in the end, burned our whole house down.
ChapterOne
Angeline
Three years later…
“It’s not me, Angeline,” Flynn said evenly as I poured him an orange juice. “It’s you.” His flinty gray-blue eyes met mine across the small table in our apartment kitchen, daring me to argue.
But how could I say a thing, when all the breath had left my lungs?
It was the meanest and probably the truest thing he’d ever said to me.
Flynn was not a mean guy. He could be stoic, even rigid. He was hard on the outside but soft on the inside, if you could burrow down deep enough to find it.
I’d tried.
And he’d tried—to be everything I’d ever wanted in a man. I would’ve told him I was sorry that he’d failed at that, but I’d told him I was sorry a thousand times, for a thousand things, and all it did was put bandages on top of bandages.
We were broken beyond repair, and I was afraid in my heart of hearts that he was right.
It was me.
I got up to plate his breakfast while biting my lip, hard. The eggs were about to burn. I laid the plate of sunny-side-up, back bacon and mixed fruit, his favorite, in front of him, like I did pretty much every morning. Then I kissed him on the temple, knowing it was the last time I’d ever kiss him. I breathed in his scent.
He tensed, but said nothing else.
What was there to say?
We’d both said more than enough last night. The ghosts of that argument, just one of so many and yetthe one, the final, insurmountable one, clung in the air around us. The shadows under his eyes matched my own. There was no sleep in our home last night. Who could sleep when the end was so near? When the still, silent darkness was so empty and yet so loud with his hurt, and with mine.
We both knew this was coming. We both knew it had to end.
At least he was brave enough to end it.
