Page 99 of Hard to Lose

“No. I didn’t know you and Ryan were one and the same until after”—a sob hiccups out of me—“until after we danced in the rain, and then it was too late to tell you the truth.”

“But you lied about everything else. About school and your thesis and . . .” He grabs a pillow off the couch and squeezes it so hard with a feral growl. “Was everything you said to me last night a lie too?”

The tears in his eyes are unmistakable now. He doesn’t blink them away, doesn’t hide them. This time the pain and betrayal are much more evident.

“That wasn’t a lie,” I whisper as my own tears course down my cheeks. “Please let me explain. I need to explain.”

“There’s nothing to explain.” He looks down to his hands, to his cell phone in it, and sighs. When he looks back up, the hard glint in his eyes scares the shit out of me. “I’m going to leave now. I have to get the fuck out of here and away from you.” He sniffs. “And when I come back, I want you gone. I want it to be like you were never here in the first place.”

“Gunner. No.”

But the last look he gives me before he grabs his keys and walks out of the house tells me everything I need to know.

No amount of pleading will fix this.

Nothing will.

I did this to myself.

I did this to us.

I stumble backward and slump onto the couch. Agony swallows me whole.

I stare at the front door hoping he’ll come back in. Wishing he could see through his anger. Desperately begging for him to give me a minute to explain how this spiraled out of control.

To look past his devastation and see mine too.

To know that with every step he runs from me, my heart is also breaking like thousands of shards of glass. Like the plate I shattered with my name on it in the rage room.

But he doesn’t come back.

And that’s what I deserve.

He’s not coming back.

“I have to get the fuck out of here and away from you. And when I come back, I want you gone. I want it to be like you were never here in the first place.”

That’s when I completely understand what misery feels like. Because my heart will never recover.

And I will never, ever forgive myself for the utter despair and anger I put on Gunner’s face and in Gunner’s heart. I will never forgive myself for breaking a man who never deserved anything but good.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Gunner

I drive.

My route is aimless and it does absolutely nothing to clear the noise in my head and hurt in my heart.

She wasn’t a grad student collecting info on military life.

Does it matter? Yes. God yes, it does. Not because she wasn’t a grad student but because she didn’t tell me who she was.

Because she lied to me.

Because she deceived me.

I end up at the national cemetery several towns over. I sit in the truck and watch the American flags wave in the breeze on the headstones. They’re a sober reminder that I’m alive and this is a blip in the game of life . . . but why does it hurt so fucking much?