AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“No shit, Sherlock. You made me look like an asshole. I told her I loved her, and she sailed off into the sunset with the professor. Brilliant advice, you dick weasel.” I walked to the refrigerator and poured myself a glass of juice.
Kingston chuckled. “I wasn’t talking about you telling her you loved her being the bad idea. I’m talking about the fact that you did it on a sticky note. It wasn’t the right way to go about it. Ruby isn’t really the sticky note type of girl.”
No. She’s the heart-breaking kind of girl. The kind of girl who worms her way into your heart so deep that you can’t breathe without her, and then she just walks away. Completely unscathed.
“Whatever. It was shit advice, and I don’t want to talk about it.”
“River,” he said, his voice serious now. “Look at me.”
“What?”
“You love her. Telling her was not a mistake.”
“I’m over it. I like my life the way that it was. It was a mistake to get that close to her.”
“I disagree,” he said.
“Of course, you do. It’s your favorite thing to do,” I hissed, going to the cabinet for some pain reliever. My fucking head was killing me. My chest had this dull ache that I couldn’t shake. I popped two aspirin into my mouth and chased it down with some juice.
“I know you’ve been through a lot. I know that losing Mom and Dad the way we did was tough on you. I’m the lucky one, because I don’t remember them the way that you do. But you, you remember everything. And you spent months in the hospital after the accident recovering, knowing that our parents were gone. I got off a whole lot easier,” he said, catching me off guard with the conversation.
What the fuck is happening?
“Ignorance is bliss. It’s not your fault.” I cleared my throat.
“You’ve been really good to me, River. I mean, there is no brother that outshines you,” he said, his eyes suddenly welling up with emotion.
“What the fuck are you talking about? Are you sick? Dying?”
He chuckled. “No. I’m worried about you. You’re a good man. The best brother in the world. And you deserve to be happy. It’s okay that you told Ruby that you love her. That’s what life is about.”
“Says the biggest playboy on the planet. You’ve never told a woman that you loved her.” I tried to push the lump forming in my throat away and keep my tone light.
“Hey, I don’t run from love. I just love a lot of women for a short period of time.” He chuckled. “I don’t close myself off the way you do, and that’s because I haven’t been hurt the way that you have. But I’ve seen a difference in you since Ruby came to town.”
I leaned against the kitchen island and crossed my feet at the ankles. “In what way?”
“You were happy. Lighter. Not so broody and angry.” He shrugged. “She was good for you.”
“And look how the fuck that turned out. It ended the way it started… explosive. I’m the one who didn’t follow the rules. She was just playing a game.”
“Come on, brother. Do you really think that? You know her. That’s not who she is. She’s as much a straight shooter as you are. She makes no apologies for who she is. She didn’t suddenly change overnight.”
In hindsight, I knew logically that was true. Hell, I knew who she was. But I didn’t know what to fucking think anymore.
“Well, her boyfriend came to move her to the city. She never bothered to say goodbye. I’d say that was a pretty good sign that I was misreading things.”
“Do we know that’s true?”
“Do we know that’s true?Were my fucking eyes lying? I saw them together in the kitchen. She’s gone, and she never said a word to me after getting the note. So, yeah, we know it’s true.”
“How do you know she saw the sticky note?”
I groaned. “King, I love you, brother. I really do. But my head is pounding, and my heart—the one I didn’t know was a viable organ in my body before Ruby came into my fucking life—is shattered. I can’t talk about this anymore or make sense of it. It is what it is. It’s over, and I have one more day to wallow in my fucking misery before I go back to work, and I’d like to do it alone.”
He nodded, looked back down at his soup, and took a few more bites before pushing to his feet. He walked toward me, reached into his back pocket, pulled out a yellow sticky note, and placed it in my hand.
For fuck’s sake.
