IT WAS like deja vu as I stepped foot into the penthouse and heard Blue’s crying in the distance. Only this time, I didn’t hesitate to get to her. And maybe it was wrong, and perhaps it wasn’t fair of me, but I wrapped my hand around the handle of her bedroom door and went to push it open, only to discover she’d locked herself inside.
“Blue.” My eyes closed as I leant my forehead against the hardwood. “Open the door.”
“You lied to me,” she accused. “About everything.”
Apparently, I did have a heart, because the sound of her voice was breaking it.
I swallowed, pushing my head against the door as I tried to force my way through one more time. “Come on, open the door. Let’s talk properly. Please, not like this. I can’t fix it like this.”
“Talk?”
I could hear she was crying.
Just the sound of it tortured me.
“We have nothing to talk about. Your wife, she told me everything, Walker. I had begun to fall for you. I began to fall for you, only to discover you’re nothing but a fucking fraud.”
I shook my head against the wood, knowing Sophia had filled her head with inconsolable bullshit.
“You should have told me.”
Fuck.
“I know,” I admitted, feeling my chest tighten while trying to breathe through the reality of my betrayal. The feeling of regret was relatively new to me, and I wasn’t entirely sure how to tame it.
“About everything.”
“I know. You’re right.”
“About Sophia,” her tone choked. “About the accident.”
“Blue, baby, I know. I fucking know. Please, just… open the door.” I took hold of the handle again, resisting the urge to break the door down. Because all I wanted to do, all I fucking wanted to do, was take her in my arms, hold her and tell her I was sorry.
I was so sorry, but I wasn’t going to apologise to a fucking door.
“I’m… not ready.”
My hand shook against the handle, and I inhaled a deep breath before exhaling it back through my nose and dropping my arm. “I’m not going anywhere. Either open the door so we can talk, or stay right where you are, but you’ll hear me out if it’s the last thing you do before you leave.”
“What?”
I turned around, sliding down the door until my ass hit the floor. “You’re going home tomorrow. You’re going to go back to Miami, and you’ll forget about us.” I bent my legs, dropped my head back against the door, and relaxed my forearms over my knees. “I don’t know what lies Sophia fed you, but we’re in the process of getting a divorce. What you saw in my office… shit, I know what it looked like, but nothing happened. I wouldn’t do that to you. Not after what happened between us this morning. Sophia wants a baby–she thought–fuck knows what she thought, but she’s nothing to me, Blue. You hear me?”
Her crying lessened, but her breathing was ragged. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to grasp all of this.” I heard her back hit the door, and I was sure she mimicked my position from the other side as her voice moved with her. Ignoring everything I mentioned of Sophia, it seemed she only held on to the most crucial factor. “I’m going home?”
She was strong, even through her sadness. And I admired that.
I admired her.
Everything about her was worth admiring from the moment she sat beside me on the plane. And if I wanted her to be happy, the only thing that made sense now was for me to admire her from afar. The thought made me sick to my stomach, but despite me wanting to be selfish, of fighting the battle for her to stay, it was the right thing to do. The only thing to do. Because look at what I’d done to her in the small amount of time we’d had together. What was I if not stuck between a rock and a hard place?
I closed my eyes. “Your father… he doesn’t believe it’s healthy for you to stay in London. Not after everything you’ve discovered. If it’s what you want, you can protest, but I can imagine it won’t end well if you do.”
My muscles tensed. I wanted her to protest as much as I didn’t.
“Does he know about us?”
“No, and it’s probably in your best interests that we don’t complicate things further by telling him.” I pinched the bridge of my nose and cursed under my breath, aware I was being cold, but knowing my intentions came from a good place.
“My best interests?” She scoffed. “By complicate, you mean you don’t want him to pull out of the buyout? Sophia told me,” she stated, and I had to bite my tongue. “Do I mean that little? Was anything we shared real? I don’t even know who you really are.”
I was conflicted.
Completely conflicted.
I only had to transfer the funds, and The Lagoon would be mine. What was in the way of keeping Blue too? Perhaps we had something worth fighting for.
There was a possibility I was fucking deluded, because what thirty-four-year-old man fell in love with an eighteen-year-old girl and lived happily ever after?
When I reopened my eyes, I realised they were wet. Admitting to myself I’d fallen in love was, in fact, fucking painful.
And I was crying?
Honestly, what the fuck?
“In just two weeks, you’ve probably gotten to know more of me than anyone else,” I said solemnly.
Her voice trembled, but I heard the defiance. “I don’t believe that for a second.”
I knew I couldn’t have it both ways–I had to choose.
Did I open up? Destroy the remainder of the relationship between her and her father? Between her father and me? Did I fight for her? Did I let her go?
Stay.
Be with me.
Go, live your fucking life.
“Don’t waste your youth on me, baby,” I whispered the words into thin air. She wouldn’t hear them–they were louder in my head than they were leaving my mouth.
I sighed. “You have every right to be mad. But you have to understand it was never my decision to keep the past from you. I have to live with the guilt for the rest of my life. How could I have known that running that red light would have had your mother do the same? If I could have saved her, Blue, I would have. But it was too late. She was gone the moment the cars collided.”
“It should have been you,” she murmured. “The other car should have killed you.”
I rubbed the pads of my fingers over my eyes, revisiting the memory as it came to the forefront of my mind and feeling the guilt as it held me hostage. When people hurt, they often said shit they didn’t mean. Though I knew she didn’t mean what she said, it didn’t make it any less true.
“It should’ve,” I agreed, my voice thick.
It should’ve been me.
WITH EVERY DROP of rain that hit the windshield, the window wipers in the shitty rust bucket I was driving fought to clear my view. But with the rain falling hard, my visibility of the road was limited. And with Noah in the backseat, constantly sprouting question after question about where we were going and if I was going to get into trouble for stealing my father’s car, the rain against the windshield felt like the least of my fucking problems.
“Are we there yet?”
“How do I know if we’re there yet, if I don’t know where we’re going?” I replied.
“We’ve been driving for hours.”
“Four,” I deadpanned. “I’ve been driving for four hours, and if I hadn’t had to stop for you to piss every thirty minutes, we might have been somewhere by now.”
“How do you know we would be somewhere if you don’t know where we’re going?”
“Fuck, for a ten-year-old, I don’t know if you’re smart or stupid.”
“Maybe I take after you.”
I smirked. “Maybe.”
“Are you gonna miss them?”
Them.
As in our parents.
Though even calling them our parents felt like a push. Parents were supposed to care, love, and provide. Noah’s father was nowhere to be found, and pushing aside my mother, my father was a drunk. A drunk who took his anger out on Noah–an innocent child, and yet, to him, nothing but a reminder of our mother’s infidelity. I’m not quite sure my little brother understood the risk I was taking, running away with him like I was.
I shuffled in my seat, rolling my head over my shoulder to get a quick glimpse of him in the backseat before attempting to refocus on the road. “Are you?” My hands clenched around the cracked leather of the steering wheel. And again, I swung my head back to him for the second time. “Are you going to miss them?”
He looked out the window, unable to answer me.
“Noah.”
Silence.
“Lil bro.”
When I refaced the front window, I caught a glimpse of a red flash through the rain covered windshield. It only took me a second to realise I ran a red light. With that, panic ignited me, and I pressed my foot down on the accelerator. It was only when I reached the clearing that I glanced at my rearview mirror. And as the back wiper cleared the rain from my view, two sets of headlights collided behind me with a crash.
BLUE
I WAS grateful for the invention of waterproof make-up, as Walker revisited the night he saved me. Despite the tears free-falling down my cheeks, I managed to apologise for what I said before I knew his side of the story. And as much as it hurt to relive the past, I realised now it truly was a freak accident. He didn’t reply, and a part of me couldn’t blame him. Before he told me his version of events, I’d all but wished him dead, and though I hadn’t heard him leave, I wasn’t entirely sure he was still on the other side of my door.
With my back against the hardwood, still fully dressed for the event I never got to experience, I found myself staring through the window and up at the stars as life in the city carried on as usual below. It seemed I was going through the motions. One by one. Two by two. Nothing but bloodshot eyes and a heavy heart as I pondered whether there was a point to all of this… hurt.
It appeared I was all cried out, and now I was left with a hollowness in the pit of my stomach.
My cheek pressed against the wood as I spoke to the man I somewhat hoped was still on the other side, even if I gave him no reason to be. “Are you still there?”
“Yeah.” His voice was all rough and lazy. I forced a deep breath, waited for a beat, and then stood to unlock the door. We seemed to have discussed the accident, but what about the rest?
“Do you still love her?” I asked, opening the door and asking the question before he had the chance to stand.
“Sophia?” he questioned as he placed his palms on the floor and pushed up to face me.
I hated the way he said her name.
He rolled his lips as his gaze travelled the length of me. He only settled his glare when he met my face, no doubt puffy from all my crying. His own eyes were bloodshot, his hair a mess like he’d been running his hands through it. And like me, he wore the same clothes he had on earlier.
“No,” he said sternly, holding my eyes. “I could never love her. Not the way a husband should love his wife, at least.”
“Right,” I said, my gaze drawn to the faint red of his wife’s lipstick still on his neck.
He drew his fingers to the skin and began rubbing, as if I’d just reminded him it was there. “You’re too young to understand.”
“Nate,” I huffed. “Don’t do that. You know I hate it when you treat me like some damn stupid kid.”
He released a pent-up breath. “After the accident, Noah went into foster care–”
“My father told me this,” I interrupted. “But what has Noah going into care got to do with you and your wife?”
“Blue,” he all but growled, stepping towards me. “Quit being a brat, yeah? If you want to ask me questions, you need to let me speak.”
His tone was as tempting as it was demanding. I lifted my chin, looking up into his eyes, and he stared down at me, gnawing on the inside of his cheeks.
“I married Sophia because the courts wouldn’t allow me to adopt my brother without providing a stable family unit. That’s it. That’s all it fucking was. And trust me, I tried everything I could until I was forced otherwise. Sophia knew the arrangement, and she knew what she signed up for. She’d always known I was never with her out of love. Fuck, I had a vasectomy because I never wanted anything more with her. I didn’t love her, Blue. I couldn’t.”
He had to be fucking with me.
“Eleven years, Walker. It’s a long time to be married to someone you ‘couldn’t’ love.”
His nostrils flared. “I realise that to anyone on the outside looking in, it seems unusual. But it worked for us. It worked for the things we wanted and for the life we lived. I don’t believe in love. I’ve witnessed enough loss in my life to rid myself of the grief that leeches on to it.”
His words winded me. “Even now, you don’t believe in love?”
I waited for his response, only to receive silence.
“Wrong answer,” I told him. Except it was the only one I needed to help make my choice. And yet I felt his silence wrap around my heart and squeeze so hard, the only thing I wished it would do was burst. And then I stepped back and slammed the door in his face.
He’d warned me we wouldn’t ever grow roots and flourish. I was the fool who didn’t listen.
