We’re on the same page. Our secrets are out… but there’s one question that’s been haunting me. The stillness of the moment feels like the right time to bring the final shadow into the light.
“Hey Alana?” I swallow and push down the anxiety clawing at my throat. This is it. I am about to get the answer I have craved for years. “Why did you break up with me?”
Time moves at a glacial speed. Alana’s body stiffens, rigid with tension like she’s stepped into a room full of spiders. “Is that a fucking joke?”
“No.” Not the reaction I expected.
Confusion and rage consuming her face. “I didn’t.” But the rage shifts to anxiety, and she rubs her fists against her legs. It’s so implausible. Nothing makes sense.
“If you didn’t break up with me, then why did we break up?”
If her legs and knuckles were made of wood, the whole room would be on fire. Her voice is equally heated as she spits, “You broke up with me.”
Five words, and none of them make sense. This is the only thing that could knock my world further off its axis. “No, I didn’t.”
“Yes. You. Did.” Alana is many things, but a liar is not one of them.
“But why?” I try to shake the confusion out of my head. The second question follows instantly. “What did you do?”
“I. DON’T. KNOW!” She stands, shaking her head in disgust and throws her arms in the air. “Of course, you assumed I did something wrong. You and everyone else. Why would I have broken up with you? I was going to move to L.A. I put a deposit down on an apartment. I transferred to Los Angeles Business School. I was going to uproot my whole life to be with you!” Alana wraps her arms around her waist and turns away from me. “But you apologized. You took full responsibility for our breakup.”
“Yeah. For whatever I did that made you so mad you left me.” My mouth goes dry, like a ten-thousand-year-old desert. Fog and darkness creep into my vision. No. Stay in the moment. Tell her the truth. “I don’t know why I would have broken up with you. I bought you a ring.” She freezes.
“It wasn’t an engagement ring.” I clarify quickly, “More like a promise ring. You were far too logical to rush into something like an engagement. But once you graduated, I planned on proposing.” I swallow. “I bought it when Legacy sent me to Sweden to learn about producing. In the Scandinavian winter, I saw it in a shop window and knew you would love its simple beauty.” That memory is in high definition in my brain.
She tilts her head back and exhales, “Oh no,” like puzzle pieces sliding into place, but I’m still lost. The rage and confusion drain from her voice. “Do you remember leaving me?” She corrects herself. “Do you remember anything about our last few days?”
Dread is not the right word. Neither is soul-crushing. There is a feeling when fear becomes so palpable that your brain shuts down emotion and focuses only on facts. Of course, my brain takes it one step further. “No,” I whisper with shame.
“You blacked out.” She deflates into the chair. I nod, thinking back and only hitting blank spots in my mind. “What is the last thing you remember?” she asks.
“You had gotten your acceptance letter to LABS. I remember being so happy because Legacy was going to pay for the whole thing and even hire you. We could start our lives without some massive debt hanging over us.”
She bows her head. “And when do your memories start back up?”
I swallow as the wrongness of the image replays over in my mind. I remember the emotions, the nerves of being in public, the acceptance that this was my new life, I was Grae and Davin was officially gone forever. Scrubbing my burning eyes, I confess, “I was kissing Amanda on a red carpet.”
“May to November,” she whispers. “You lost six months.”
Six months.
CHAPTER 22
Alana
Day 6
The months after our breakup was the darkest part of my adult life. While I was at the gun range with Lance, doing anything to keep my soul-crushing depression at bay, Grae has the luxury of blank space in his brain. Nothing. None of it is fair.
I alone spent twelve years carrying the burden of our breakup. Thousands of nights wondering what I did wrong. Where my failure was. I kept every other relationship at arm’s length because I didn’t know what I did to hurt Grae so badly that he would leave me, and I didn’t want a repeat experience.
I had my theories. He wanted Amanda because she was everything that I’m not and could give him clout, power and fame. Or maybe that I wasn’t experienced enough for his new life. But I kept coming back to the same conclusion—I wasn’t good enough.
Now as he sits on the bed, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his palms, I think I was wrong. Grae’s shoulders are hunched as if the weight of twelve years crashes down on him at once.
And I guess it was.
“My memories come back and you’re gone,” he says, shaking his head. “I spent years thinking I fucked up. That I must have done something so terrible that you’d walk away from your future. Still, anytime I ask anyone about it, they change the subject. I assumed they were shielding me, or that they didn’t want to relive whatever boyfriend crime I committed. Like they got me in the breakup and now they’re stuck with me.”
