Page 41 of Over the Limit

Is that what this is?

Fuck.

“Since you seem to think you’re bigger than you really are.” He offers a strained smile. “I’ll see you when I see you.”

“No, you won’t.”

He stops the door in mid-swing as he goes to shut it. “You always come back like a dog to its master.”

What the fuck?

“Not this time.”

His chuckle is condescending and yet somehow indifferent. “Yeah. You’ll come back. You’ll never really leave me.”

Those words. It’s like I hear everything they say and maybe he has been saying for the first time. You’ll be here regardless of what I do or how I treat you.

I glance over his shoulder again, not wanting to have this conversation with an audience but not exactly given any other choice. “No. I won’t.” I shift on my feet willing the words to come. Willing me to say the words to the person who has been as constant to me as breathing for the past ten years. “This just isn’t working anymore. I deserve better than this.”

“And you’re saying you can find better than me?” he asks incredulously.

“Maybe not.” I shrug, the numbness settling in much easier than I expected it to. “But we’re over.”

He scoffs, shakes his head, and says one word—“Perfect”—before shutting the door to leave me standing there staring at it.

Long enough to hear his laugh through the door. To hear him seemingly unaffected, whether it’s because he thinks I’m joking or because he really doesn’t give a fuck. Both are equally disheartening.

Walk away, Blair.

One foot in front of the other.

Oddly enough, I listen to myself. I take a few steps back with my eyes glued to the door like he’s going to open it back up and tell me he’s sorry.

But that never happens.

It’s only once I step outside the hotel lobby that I feel like I can breathe. I gulp in huge breaths of air, one after another, as if I’ve been suffocated.

I’m naïve to think this hasn’t been coming. That we’re not in different places, different spaces, and that a break was coming.

But damn it stings.

He cast me aside without a second thought.

I’m worth more than that.

I lift my hand to hail a taxi and draw in my first steady breath as the car pulls away from the curb.

I just booked Tori Michelle—a huge feat in and of itself—that will speak volumes professionally.

And I just left Oliver Rossi.

The funny thing is, there’s definite sadness with it. A sense that I failed at something when I know better than to take the blame for something we’re both responsible for.

And yet . . . that sense of failure, that weight of sadness, doesn’t come with the soul-crushing despair I’d expect it to have.

Right now, as I watch the city lights flash by outside my window, I almost feel . . . lighter.

Relieved.