Читать книгу The Marked Men Series Books 1–6: Rule, Jet, Rome, Nash, Rowdy, Asa - Jay Crownover - Страница 25

It had been three weeks, give or take a day, with no contact from Rule. No text messages, no phone calls, no emails, no carrier pigeons, just a whole lot of silence and heartbreak on my end. Rome hadn’t even returned my calls or texts telling him good-bye and that I would miss him while he was gone. He left for the desert mad at me, and as upsetting as that was, the daily battle I had with myself about whether to call Rule and beg him to forgive me was soul crushing. I wanted to plead with him to understand that it was never my secret to tell regardless of our relationship. Ayden kept saying he would cool off and come around while Margot and Dale firmly believed he wasn’t going to speak to any of us ever again. They were in the same boat as me; neither of the boys was speaking to them, and Margot had nearly had a nervous breakdown when Rome had refused to allow them to drive him down to Fort Carson for his send-off. Instead, the brothers went together, leaving the rest of us out in the cold.

I was hurting but I was also sick and tired of my love and affection not being enough for anybody. I had loved Rule longer and harder than anyone else in my life and that still wasn’t enough for him to look beyond his own hurt feelings and sense of betrayal to work things out with me. I was still pissed that he had spent the week prior to the bomb being dropped trying to act and behave in a way I had never asked for or wanted, but when I was alone at night and crying in bed I had to admit that it was a sweet—if misguided—gesture. I remembered telling him to be aware of how bad things could be if we tried to do this and it didn’t work. Somehow, even finding him in bed time and time again with every skanky girl this side of the Platte River couldn’t hold a candle to this complete freeze-out.

I tried really hard not to worry about what he was doing or who he was doing it with, but every day that passed I became more and more fatalistic. Whatever he had felt for me wasn’t enough to get him past the hurt he was feeling, and it obviously came nowhere near the heart-wrenching emotion I felt for him. As much as it pained me to let it go, I had to get over him. I had to work at moving on because, even if he did get back in touch with me, there was just too great a chance he had relapsed into his old ways, and there was simply no way I would survive that kind of betrayal from someone I cared so deeply about. So instead of languishing, I forced a smile every day, picked back up the shifts I had dropped at work, threw myself into my studies, and spent as much time as I could with Ayden and Cora. I was careful around Cora to give nothing away and she was just as careful to never, ever mention Rule or anything having to do with him.

To say my parents were excited that Rule was no longer in the picture was an understatement. Unfortunately, I had let it slip that we were no longer seeing each other during a less-than-friendly conversation with my mom. My dad was so happy he took my newly repainted BMW and traded it in for a Porsche Cayenne because I had mentioned wanting an SUV for the snow. I tried to refuse it. I didn’t need to be bribed, considering Rule had effectively left me, but the title was in my name and the BMW was already gone, so I reluctantly accepted it. My mom was even worse. She called every day to check on me. The woman who had never had the time of day for me was suddenly overly interested in everything I did and everyone I spent time with. I think she was trying to subtly let me know that as long as I kept unsavory characters out my life, I would eventually gain her approval.

The funny thing was now that Rule was gone, I didn’t want it. I would have taken being disowned and disinherited a million times over if it meant I could just get him to talk to me, just get him to feel one-half of what I had always felt for him. I think my disinterest made both my parents nervous. They were so used to dangling approval and acceptance in front of me like a golden carrot, they didn’t know what to do now that it held no appeal for me. Having the power now should have felt exhilarating, but instead it just left me hollow. I should have fought them sooner. I should have felt this way as soon as Rule and I started whatever it was we had been doing. I had wasted so much time, and it just piled more sadness and regret on top of what I was already managing.

“Thanks, Lou.” I gave him one of the strained smiles that I was becoming a pro at and let him scoop me up in a bear hug as he walked me to my car after my shift. I hadn’t heard a word from Gabe in weeks, but it made me feel better to know someone cared enough to make sure I was safe, so I never turned Lou down when he offered to see me to my car. This was an odd night on for me, meaning I had just picked up a shift because one of the girls was sick, so Ayden wasn’t working and I was alone. In fact, my roommate seemed to have shaken out of her funk and was on a date with a very cute physics major who just happened to be as different from a rock-and-roller as one could get. She had gone out with him twice this week and seemed a little more like her old self. I was happy for her even if it meant one more night I spent wallowing in misery by myself. No one said the road to recovery was pretty, after all.

Lou set me back on my feet and gave me a peck on the forehead. “I miss that young man of yours, Shaw. He was a smartass, but a good kid.”

I sighed because I kept having this same conversation with Lou. “I know. I miss him, too.”

“Take care, girly.”

“I always try.”

My new car was awesome; I’m not going to lie. It purred like all good sports cars should, but had no trouble navigating the icy downtown streets as I made my way across town to my apartment. I listened to the Avett Brothers sing me sad songs about broken hearts all the way. It was well after midnight on a weekday, so there wasn’t really anybody out on the road. A dog barked somewhere, it was cold and dark, and I shivered involuntarily. I hated this part of the drive home; it just hammered home the fact that I was really and truly on my own now. I was lucky to get a spot right in front of the building and sprinted to the security door because my uniform wasn’t meant to be worn outside at the tail end of a Denver winter. I heard the familiar click of the lock when I punched in my code, and ran inside.

I blew a warm breath on my fingers and dug around in my purse for my house keys, since I still hadn’t added the new key for my SUV to the set. Normally, I had them out and ready to go, but lately I had been so distracted by all the noise in my head and the heavy weight in my chest, that maintaining my personal safety had fallen somewhere toward the bottom of the priority list. I had just pushed the key in the lock and was getting ready to turn the deadbolt when a deep voice said my name from over my shoulder. For a split second I was excited. Unbridled relief flooded through me, because the only guy who would be waiting for me at my apartment was Rule. Before I could turn around and throw my arms around him, hard hands grabbed me by the back of the neck and shoved me face-first into the door. I gasped in shock, some part of my brain flashing that I should be screaming for help right now, but the door swung open with the flick of a wrist decked out in an all-too-familiar Tag Heuer watch, and I went stumbling forward as rough hands pushed me inside.

My purse went flying and I was stunned to see Gabe standing before me. He looked as pressed and polished as usual, except his eyes were crazy and he had a demented grin on his face that terrified me. I couldn’t move.

“How did you get in here?” I knew this wasn’t good. I wasn’t safe with him, didn’t want to be alone with him at all, but the apartment was tiny and there wasn’t anywhere to run. My mace was in my purse on the floor, and the Taser that Rule had bought for me was resting uselessly in my new car. I was really regretting not letting Rule leave his gun over here all the times he had asked when we were seeing each other.

Gabe ran obviously agitated hands through his dark hair and watched me like any other predator watched its intended prey. “I told your mother that we were working toward reconciliation and wanted to surprise you. She gave me the code. I followed you home from work since the freak is obviously out of the picture and the military monkey hasn’t been around. I figured now was as good a time as any for us to get on the same page.”

He was so cold, so matter-of-fact, that I didn’t even think he understood he had just forced his way into my apartment and that I was trembling in fear. I crossed my arms over my chest to try to bluff away some of the terror I was feeling but he just continued to watch me like he was mentally taking me apart.

“We aren’t even reading from the same book, Gabe. You need to go because in like two seconds I’m about to start screaming my damn head off.”

He shook his head and made a tsk-tsk sound. “Well, you see, Shaw, things have really gone to shit for me. Ever since your thug of a boyfriend made me look like a pansy and my dad pulled the plug on my credit cards because of that little stunt you pulled with the restraining order, things have been going downhill. I’m failing my political theory class, my fraternity wants me out because apparently it’s not okay to let some guy with the IQ of a sewer rat make you look like a sucker on your own campus, my parents are furious with me over the restraining order, and the internship I wanted with your mother’s campaign fell through because she simply didn’t have time to get it together. So you see, Shaw, ever since you decided to be a selfish whore and turn your back on all the great things we could have had, I’ve been having to work double time to get what I deserve.”

He was crazy, flat-out off his freaking rocker. I was trying to edge away from him because I knew if he moved close enough to get his hands on me things were going to go from terrifying to unimaginably horrible.

“I’m sorry you’re having a hard time with things, Gabe, but you shouldn’t have messed with my car. It pushed Rule over the edge. I told you to leave me alone or you wouldn’t like what he was going to do.”

I shrieked because apparently bringing up Rule was the wrong thing to do. Gabe moved faster than I would have thought he was able to. He chased me as I pedaled backward, keeping as much space between us as I could. Unfortunately, he caught me in the living room, and even though I fought, he was just bigger and stronger. He grabbed me by the throat and we struggled all the way to the floor. I kicked an end table over, which made a huge racket and earned me a backhand across the cheek that split the side of my lip open. He sat all the way across my middle, pinning my arms to my sides and wrapped a hand around my throat. My eyes were watering from the tears of fear and the struggle to breathe. I clawed at his squeezing hands and flailed my legs but he just bent over me and continued to tighten his hands around my neck.

“You think I care what that loser thinks? You think I give a single fuck what that degenerate wants to do to me? He’s nothing. I told you all along that he wouldn’t stick around. Now look at you—all alone and finally doing things my way. I told you I would get my way. I always do.”

I needed to get away from Gabe. He was going to kill me, seriously kill me. My vision was starting to blur in and out and my lungs were on fire. He kept squeezing and sitting on me while telling me all about how we were getting back together and how I was going to call my mother and have her reconsider her actions about his internship now that we were a couple. I shook my head back and forth, gasping for any air, and managed to get my hands between us enough that I jabbed my nails hard into the underside of his biceps, making him wince and reel up enough that I could crawl a little bit away from him. I sliced my hand open on a piece of the broken lamp as I scrambled to get my feet under me only to be dragged back down by a cruel hand in my hair. I grunted as his weight landed squarely on my back and had to blink away a steady flow of blood as the side of my head made contact with the leg of the overturned table.

“Ayden is going to be home any minute.” My voice was thready and thin from the pressure he had put on my neck, but it didn’t matter anyway; he simply jerked me back to my feet and pressed me so that I was folded in half over the back of the couch. I was trying desperately not to think about how little of a barrier my work uniform offered in the way of deterring him but he bent his face low to mine, not seeming to mind in the slightest that blood was getting everywhere.

“Who cares? You’re my girlfriend, Shaw. You belong to me. If your roommate comes home you’re just going to tell her things got out of hand while we were making up.”

He’d put so much of his weight on my back that the way he had my hand wrenched up behind me couldn’t take the torque and with a sickening pop that made both of us jerk my shoulder found its way out of its socket. I screeched in pain and went limp on that side. Fear and panic rose up hard and fast in my throat as I struggled. I knew that I had to get to my purse for the mace or to the kitchen for some kind of weapon to use against him. He let go of my hands now that one was totally useless and put one of his on the back of my neck to keep me bent over the couch while he used the other to start tugging and pulling at the bottom half of my uniform. He was muttering all kinds of broken sentences and talking about how he was going to make sure that I understood we were a couple. He was rambling about getting married and making our families one. I started to cry in earnest because I didn’t know how to stop him from violating me this way. Fortunately, part of the lamp I had kicked over landed close to the couch and a piece was imbedded in one of the cushions. While Gabe was busy tugging and pulling at my clothes I wrapped the fingers of my good hand around it. I could feel the little ruffly shorts I wore under the uniform start to rip, and that was enough to spur me into action. The only thing I could reach from my prone position was the meaty part of his thigh and I wasn’t sure that I had enough strength to do any real damage, but I swung the glass shard as hard as I could and heard him swear as he suddenly jerked back. I slumped to my hands and knees and screamed bloody murder as my weight landed on my injured arm. I crawled across the floor while he struggled to get the glass out and managed to get to my purse. I was just struggling back to my feet as he was thundering toward me, but I got the mace out and the nozzle turned toward him and gave him a full dose right in the face while he bellowed like an injured bear. I squeezed the canister in my good hand and bolted out the door. I was sure I looked like an escapee from an insane asylum. I was crying hysterically, had blood all over my face, and could barely talk because of the damage to my throat. I raced to the security door and I ran smack into Ayden as she was coming in. I collapsed into a blubbering mess as she caught me.

She was screaming my name, demanding to know what happened and I heard her dialing 911 on the phone, but between the shock and pain I just shut down. I blinked up at her through the blood trailing down over my face and was aware dimly of a crowd coming out of some of the other apartments. It was just too much and everything faded to black. I was pretty sure she caught me before I hit the ground but the next time I was cognizant of anything I was strapped to a stretcher and being loaded into the back of an ambulance. The lights and the sirens were making my head throb and a young paramedic was firing a million and one questions at Ayden as she scrambled up into the back with me. She immediately grabbed my hand and squeezed it. I noticed she was crying almost as hard as I had been.

“Gabe?” My throat was on fire and talking made it feel like I was speaking through a forest of razor blades.

Ayden brushed away her tears with shaking hands and I winced as the paramedic turned his attention to me.

“The cops have him. His dad showed up as they were putting him in the back of the police car. The mace you used on him was hard to miss so he couldn’t really deny he was in our apartment. How did he get in through the security gate?”

I flinched as the paramedic prodded at my shoulder. He turned sympathetic eyes to me. “You’re going to have to get it reset. It’s dislocated and I think the cut on your forehead is going to be deep enough that it’s going to need to be glued or sewed shut. Sorry.”

I wanted to tell him it was okay because I was alive and at least Gabe hadn’t gotten away with the ultimate violation, but talking hurt too much. When he asked about needing a sexual assault exam I shook my head no and squeezed Ayden’s hand as she started crying again.

“My mom.” The words were broken and not just because of my throat. “She gave him the code because he told her we were getting back together.”

Ayden let loose with a string of swear words that would have made Rule proud and we spent the rest of the short ride just clinging to one another. The next two hours were a blur of doctors and police officers. After the first fifteen minutes, it was clear I wasn’t going to keep up my end of the conversation with my vocal cords being as abused as they were. I had to resort to writing everything down. Gabe was in lock-up, at least for the night, and there wasn’t anything his dad could do to get him out. The detective who took my statement let me know there was a good chance his family would post his bail in the morning and he would be out, but there was now a mandatory restraining order in place and there wasn’t a thing his dad could do about it. Not that it mattered; they were keeping me at least a night in the hospital to see how bad the damage to my throat really was, and I needed superstrong painkillers to dull the migraine I was battling on top of the pain of having my shoulder shoved back into the socket.

My mom and Jack showed up sometime near dawn and my dad came as well. I told Ayden I didn’t want to see any of them, which caused a huge scene. When my mom started screaming that it was probably one of the thugs I had met while I was dating Rule, Ayden totally lost her cool and informed all of them that if it hadn’t been for my mother giving Gabe the code to the security door of the apartment this would have never happened. That shut everyone right up. My dad forced his way in using his medical connections and I spent a solid hour ignoring him and glaring while he apologized profusely. When he tried to kiss my cheek I turned my head away and made sure he could see the absolute disgust in my eyes. Part of Gabe’s obsession had to do with all the things these people represented and I just couldn’t abide having it around me right now. They all left after a nurse threatened to call security if they didn’t stop disturbing me.

Ayden pulled up a chair and propped her feet on the edge of the bed, and we both fell into a fitful sleep as morning rolled around. I would only doze on and off, needing more pain meds as my shoulder started to ache and various other parts of me that had been abused made themselves known. Ayden vanished somewhere around noon, which was fine because another round of doctors and detectives came by.

Gabe’s dad had managed to get him out on bail, but there was no dispute about how bad he had hurt me and the police were looking at charging him with attempted murder. They made me tell my story over and over again, and I never wavered from the brutal facts. Gabe was sick and needed help, but more than that he needed to be somewhere where he wasn’t able to do this to someone else. Feeling entitled enough to own another person despite their feelings in the matter was beyond mentally unstable.

Ayden came back in with yogurt and some granola, looking sheepish. “I called Cora to let her know what was going on. I didn’t even think about the fact that she would freak out while she was at work.”

I went completely still and turned wide eyes to my friend.

“Apparently Rule threw a major fit when he heard what happened and, needless to say, he’ll be here in, like, five minutes. Sorry, but I figured you should know. I guess I could ask the hospital staff to keep him out if you want, though I have a feeling stopping him when he’s all worked up might be a chore. There’d be another ex you’d have to send to the slammer for the night.”

I wasn’t sure how I felt about him coming here. On the one hand, all I had wanted for the last month was to see him, to have him acknowledge me, but on the other, it shouldn’t have taken a vicious and violent wake-up call to make that happen. I sighed and rocked my head back and forth. She was right, anyway: keeping him out if he had made his mind up to storm the castle was going to be more of a hassle than I needed right now.

“It’s fine. I can handle him.” My voice was still raw and scratchy but at least it hurt marginally less to use it now.

“You don’t look like you’re in any kind of shape to handle anything.” She wasn’t wrong. My arm was in a sling, I had a three-inch gash glued shut and wrapped in a white bandage on my forehead, matching the setup on my hand, my lip was split open and crusted with blood, and I had a wicked ring of black-and-blue bruises circling the pale skin of my throat. To top it all off, I was sporting a dandy set of black eyes from being shoved face-first into both the door and the floor.

“It’ll be fine. He can come see that I’m all right, then go about his day, which I’m sure is all he wants to do.”

She gave me a skeptical look and patted my feet where they were stacked up under the itchy hospital blanket. “All right then. If you swear you’re going to be okay I’m gonna run and find someplace with coffee that doesn’t taste like tar, and I’ll be back.”

I wasn’t going to ever really be okay again. I didn’t think anyone who had been through what I had in the last few months would, but I wasn’t scared of Rule. Almost being raped by a lunatic had given me a whole new perspective on what was missing from my life and what I was going to do differently from this point on. I wanted to fidget with my hair, but it was snaggled together with dried blood and who knew what else and it wasn’t like there was going to be any fixing my face. Rule was just going to have to face the horror show full-on and deal with it.

I was messing around on my phone, returning texts from Cora and most of Rule’s boys, letting them know I was fine, when the door opened and he came in. I looked up and watched him, so I saw the initial anger that was stamped all across his handsome face quickly bleed into horror at the sight of me all battered and bruised. I saw his chest inflate and deflate as he sucked in an audible breath and moved to the end of the bed. We stared at each other in silence and I noticed absently that his hair was still normal, if unruly, as well as its natural dark brown color. I still hated it because it made him look like a stranger. His eyes looked wild and too big for his face; a full-blown blizzard was sweeping out of the cold depths. He was messing with his lip ring like he did when he was nervous and I realized if I didn’t say anything there was a good chance we would spend the rest of the afternoon watching each other warily.

“You didn’t have to come. I’m fine, just a little banged up.”

His big hands tightened on the end of the bed and I watched the snake head bend and flex with his aggravation.

“I wanted to see for myself that you were all right. You could have called to let me know you were hurt.”

I refused to look away from him and he seemed infuriated each time his gaze landed on another part of me that was broken. “Well, considering you haven’t spoken to me for weeks, it didn’t seem very logical to let you know what was going on.”

His mouth tightened. “You’re right. I should have been there. You shouldn’t have been alone.”

I sighed and clenched my hands in the blanket. “You’re right, you should’ve been there, but not because Gabe is crazy and not because I needed protecting from him. You should have been there because you care about me as much as I care about you, but that isn’t the case. No one is to blame for this mess but Gabe; he’s sick and broken and chances are, even if someone had been with me, he still would have gone all stalker crazy, so it is what it is. I don’t hold anyone accountable but him. Besides, my body is already on the mend; it’s my heart that still feels like it went through a food processer.”

“Shaw.” He tried to interject something but I held up my good hand and looked him right in the eye. “I’m tired of my love not being good enough. I thought when this started with you I would be okay with whatever it was you were willing to give. I thought I could love you enough for the both of us since I had been suffocating in it for so long, but I realize now that I deserve more.”

I blinked back tears that snuck up on me. “I deserve it all because I’m willing to give it all. I would have worked through the darkness with you, Rule. What I won’t do is watch you walk away from me every time something happens that has the potential to hurt you. I’m sorry I never talked to you about Remy, but I told you all time and time again he and I weren’t a couple. You had the undeniable proof on my birthday. You should be mad at him for keeping it a secret, not me. You were right all along; we don’t trust each other enough to ever have had a chance at making this work. I think I wanted it too much and you didn’t want it enough.”

I was surprised to see moisture in his eyes when I was done talking. The only time I had ever seen Rule cry was at Remy’s funeral. He reached out a hand like he was going to lay it on my leg but retracted it before he ever made contact.

“Shaw, what if I did love you?” His voice was just a hint above a whisper. “Seeing you like this makes me want to murder Davenport with my bare hands, but it makes something deep inside me hurt. I’ve missed you these last few weeks, but I was also furious with you. I couldn’t get the two to ever line up.”

I gave my head a sad little shake and let the tears gathered in my eyes fall. “That isn’t enough. I’ve spent my entire life trying to live up to unreachable expectations. You were the only thing I ever wanted for myself, and once I got you, you felt like you had to entirely change who you were in order to be with me. I refuse to put the same kind of expectations I always struggled with on someone else, even if I didn’t ask that of them. Parts of us are great together, Rule, but other parts of us just don’t work. All this”—I waved my good hand over my reclining form—“will knit itself back together. It’ll be fine and we’ll just go back to whatever it was we were doing before.” I made sure that he understood I was talking about everything from the gash on my head to my broken heart. I would get over him. There just wasn’t another option.

“You’ve always been in my life, Shaw. We should’ve been able to make this work.” I wanted to shrug but I only had one working shoulder so that wasn’t an option. Instead I swiped at my tears with the back of a hand and offered him up a shaky smile.

“There are a lot of things that maybe should have gone one way and didn’t. I know most people thought you and I being together was a long shot, so we should just be grateful for what we had.”

“I feel like I’m letting you down, letting everyone down, and for once it’s bothering the hell out of me. I just don’t know how to work around what’s going on up here.” He tapped his temple with a finger.

I was crying in earnest now and it was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that if he could just love me, just learn to let me love him the way he deserved, the way I desperately wanted to, then it would all be fine, but that wasn’t the case. We needed to believe in ourselves, needed to trust that we were each enough without trying to be other people. That just wasn’t happening, so I closed my eyes and for once I was the one to shut him out and fall into the dark.

“Some things just aren’t meant to be. I’m getting tired. Can you send a nurse in on your way out? I think the painkillers are starting to wear off.”

“Shaw, I’m so sorry.”

“Me, too, Rule, really. I am, too.” I had spent a lifetime in love with him, and as much as I wanted to be strong and put it all behind me, letting go of what I felt for him was going to be the hardest thing I ever did. We stared at each other for a long, sad minute, then he turned and left. When Ayden came back in the room I was crying inconsolably and she had to crawl up on the bed to wrap her arms around me. I cried longer than I ever had before. I cried until there was nothing left inside me to cry out. I let my best friend hold me as I fell apart. The nurse came in with a painkiller, but when she saw the state I was in she turned right back around and came back with a sedative.

I spent one more day in the hospital, and when I was released I realized there was no way on this earth I was going back to my apartment with Gabe out on bail—restraining order or not. Luckily, Cora had an extra couple rooms open in the house she rented in the Washington Park area because both of her roommates had recently gotten engaged to each other and had moved to their own place. Ayden dropped me off at her place and returned a couple hours later with all my essentials packed up for an extended stay. She said the property management company was working on getting our place cleaned up but it gave her the creeps to be there alone. It didn’t take more than a week for her to ask Cora if she could crash in the other vacant room at her house as well. Our apartment manager had even agreed to let us break the lease without paying a penalty because of what happened to me.

Being around the girls did wonders for both my mental health and my physical state. They never let me get down and someone was always there to remind me that everything I was feeling was temporary. They also refused to let me freak out over pressing charges against Gabe.

Things were moving fast, and a few times it looked like Gabe’s father was going to use every trick he had to get him off. Alex Carsten had stepped in and now Gabe was on an ankle monitor and being charged with not only aggravated assault, but breaking and entering as well. I didn’t think for one second that was a favor my mother called in, but Rule and I were back to radio silence so I never called to ask him or to thank him. Of course, the Davenports had the best defense lawyer in town on their payroll, but all signs pointed to a slam dunk for me, so I tried to stay positive.

I was refusing to talk to both of my parents. In fact, I hadn’t told either one of them I had moved and I had changed my phone number within hours of leaving the hospital. The fact of the matter was I had nothing to say to them; all the things I had said to Rule held true for them as well. I deserved better and if they weren’t willing to give me the love I showed them, without restrictions or demands, I didn’t want them in my life. I knew my mom was struggling with the fact that she had to be accountable for giving Gabe my security code but, like I told Rule, the only person I blamed was Gabe. It was more important to me that she recognize that she should have never pushed him on me when I told her I was in love with someone else in the first place. If they couldn’t figure out how to love and appreciate me for me, I would make do without them.

Ayden and I were settling into a new routine and we both adored Cora. It was nice to be living in a house rather than an apartment, and as each day went by it got a little easier to breathe around the hole in my chest where my heart had once been. It had only been a little over a month but it felt like a lifetime we had been apart. This time, faking it to make it was so much harder—maybe because I knew for real it was the end. This time there was no fake smiling, no pretending to glide through life. I was struggling and I was struggling hard. I missed him. I loved him. I couldn’t have him and it was killing me in an entirely different way from when I had loved him from afar without him knowing it. Cora was back to keeping all talk of work and the guys at bay, but every now and then she would let something about him slip, and every time it felt like a shard of glass in an open wound. It should have made me feel better that he didn’t sound like he was doing much better than I was, but it didn’t. We both deserved happiness; it just sucked that we couldn’t seem to find it together.

It was a couple days before Saint Patrick’s Day, which not only fell on a weekend this year but also happened to be Rule’s birthday. The girls had decided that instead of sitting around being sullen and grousing about things that we needed to go out and have fun. I didn’t want to go. I mean I really didn’t want to go, and not only because my face wasn’t entirely pretty again, but because I didn’t think I could handle being in a crowd just yet. I was almost certain that I was going to have an awful time, but because I loved them, I let them badger me into agreeing to go. To my surprise, after a few martinis at an out-of-the-way lounge Cora knew about I relaxed and actually started having a good time. Strike that, I had a fantastic time, which I totally needed.

Getting up for school the next morning was awful and I was tempted to skip, but I had missed so much because of the attack that I couldn’t afford to. I was standing in front of the mirror doing my hair and trying in vain to cover up the yellowish remnant of my black eye when I had a startling revelation: Loving Rule had never been easy. It was always hard and painful and the payoff had been years coming, but I had never decided he wasn’t worth it. To me, loving him had never been a choice; it was just something I had decided was inevitable, just like I had decided that him ever coming to care about me was never going to happen. Last night I had been so sure I wouldn’t have any fun, that going out was going to be miserable and awful, but after doing it I’d had a blast and it was totally worth the risk. I had done with Rule what I swore I never would: I had walked away because there was no guarantee in the end, no guaranteed happy ending for us.

I set my curling iron down on the sink and stared at myself in the mirror. All the sadness and loneliness was clear in the reflection staring back at me. Rule was the one thing I had always wanted and when it got hard to hold on to him, I had just let go rather than fight to keep a hold of him. That wasn’t right. I deserved love but I also deserved him and whatever form his love came in. Rule wasn’t a normal guy; there was never going to be hearts and flowers or poetry flowing with words that made me blush. What there was always going to be was give-and-take, ups and downs, and a passion that burned both of us to the core. When he asked me at the hospital “What if I did love you?” my answer should have been: “If you’re asking, you already do.”

I knew it now, could see it as clearly as I could see my own face in the mirror: Rule loved me. He just didn’t know that’s what it was. Neither one of us really had shining examples of healthy, loving relationships to draw from, but the second he told me he wanted to try, I should have known he was falling in love with me. He never tried for anyone.

There was a knock on the bathroom door and Ayden popped her head in the room. “We have to head out soon. Are you almost ready?”

Considering I only had the right side of my head curled, I think the answer was obvious. I turned to her with huge eyes. “We need to go dress shopping after school.”

She propped a hip in the doorway and lifted a dark eyebrow at me. “Any particular reason why?”

“Rule’s birthday is this weekend.”

“Cora might’ve mentioned that.”

“He’s gotta be having a birthday party.”

“She might’ve mentioned something about that as well.”

“Well, we have to go.”

“Why? I thought you were done with all that noise, or is this the martinis from last night talking?”

I shook my head and picked the curling iron back up. “I have to give him a present.”

“Oh yeah? What if he’s there with someone?”

I cut her a look. That possibility hadn’t even occurred to me. “Is that likely?”

She muttered something under her breath and brushed her long bangs out of her face. “No. Cora said he’s been pretty much a hermit since you guys split, that and his temper is on fire, so everyone who doesn’t want to be flayed alive is pretty much staying the hell out of his way. What are you planning on giving him anyway?”

“The only thing I think he wants.”

She snickered. “More jewelry for his face?”

I laughed a little. “No … me. I think the only thing he really wants is me. We were both just too messed up to realize it.”

She rubbed her hands together. “Well, it should be interesting either way.”

Interesting didn’t even begin to cover it, but my new leaf was all about self-gratification, and Rule was ultimately what I wanted to be gratified with. I could only hope he hadn’t gone so far down the tunnel that I couldn’t pull him out.