Page 36 of Hard to Love

“Well, hello to you too,” I mutter as I take a seat on the edge of the couch, my muscles more than sore from last night’s game. “I mean, I thought you’d be full of praise.”

“I did leave praise. Check your voicemail and texts. They’re all there. That’s why none of this makes sense. Obviously whatever Finn was doing was working so why did you fuck it up?”

Carson cusses but not at me. He’s old school and thinks women shouldn’t hear profanity so, I’m a little taken aback when he throws fuck in there.

Besides, of all the days in the past two months, yesterday was the one day where I felt like I did everything right. And as if it doesn’t matter, I’m still being accused of doing something wrong.

“Carson. Just tell me what you think I did. I’m sure there’s a valid explanation I can give to—”

“He quit.” Emotion I can’t pinpoint vibrates through Carson’s voice.

“Who quit?” I ask, startling, but I’m already pushing off the couch and moving toward the closed door I was looking at moments ago.

There’s no way he’d quit. Not after last night. Not after we actually worked together instead of apart. Not after—

“Oh.” It’s all I say when I push his door open to his room to find the bed made and all of his things gone. Finn quit?

“He called just a moment ago and told me that he will no longer be able to represent—”

“Babysit—” I whisper in some kind of reflexive reaction that doesn’t even matter at this point and time.

“—you, and I want to know what the hell you did because it takes a hell of a lot to make him walk away from someone.”

Finn quit . . .

“I don’t understand.”

“That makes two of us, Stevie. The man who was clearly helping get you back on the right side of wrong walked away and I deserve an answer as to why.”

“I—I—” I tried to kiss him. The world thinks we’re a couple. He’s seen me naked. The thoughts run a marathon through my head but none of them make sense. None of them are valid reasons why he would quit. Especially after the success of last night. “I don’t know. He didn’t give a reason? An explanation? Anything?”

“Just that he thought he’d be able to make it work, but now doesn’t think it will.”

“So he quit on me.” My own words sting as I say them. It didn’t matter how well I did last night or that I came back and fought, he still quit on me.

He still left me.

The minute the tears well up, my temper ignites with a raging anger I don’t completely understand. It’s the only way I know how to cope with this type of rejection. With being abandoned yet again.

“I’ve got—my other line is going—Christ, kid, I needed him to help you.”

Disappointment rings through his tone. Is his anger directed at both Finn and me?

I shake my head, although Carson can’t see it before the call disconnects.

I stare at Finn’s empty room and his bed that obviously wasn’t slept in. Did he even come back here last night? Did he come back but never sleep as he pondered what to do?

I behave and this is what I get?

Confusion reigns and anger builds as I try to understand what happened. As I try to fathom why I’m so hurt by this when I didn’t want him here as my shadow in the first place.

But I am hurt.

And rejected.

And questioning myself.

With the phone in my hand, I close the door and blink away the tears.