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Where do I start?
“I thought I’d had it handled, Eli, but I couldn’t have been more wrong.” I shake my head and sigh. “He stole a piece of me during our time together in a way no one else has before. It feels as though he stomped on it, and it’s crushed deep into the ground.”
It sounds poetic when I say it, but depressing as hell if you think long and hard about the words.
“Did you talk to him before you left?”
“He wasn’t up, I don’t think. Either that or he didn’t care as much as I did about what we seemed to be building and chose not to see me out.” I’m banking on the latter.
I look up and give him a weak smile. “You can say it, you know? I’ve been waiting to hear it since you got a good look at me.”
Elias sighs heavily and wraps an arm over my shoulders to pull me against his side. “I won’t say it either because I don’t believe I was right.” There’s a frown on his face as he shakes his head. “I think he really likes you, Wren.”
Yeah, right.
I don’t answer, or give my own opinion, only sit in silence until Elias breaks it. “What’s going on, though? Why did you come back with your things?”
“Oh,” I say and chuckle, even though nothing about the situation is funny. “That’s the real kicker. His manager called me this morning because a picture of us got leaked and plastered all over the media.”
After he called me, I went online and found the exact one he was talking about. It was anything intimate, just him glaring at the guy who tried talking to me and me staring at the two of them behind Ryker.
If it wasn’t for the fact that we were alone together at a club, there’s a chance things wouldn’t have ended up the way they did.
“You got fired?”
“Oh, yeah. Not just fired, but told in a not-so-nice way to act like I never existed and leave Ryker the hell alone.”
“Damn,” Elias says as he leans back, taking me right along with him. “What are you going to do?”
I scoff. “There’s not much I can do. I doubt I’ll ever be able to be a therapist again, now that my business is out there, and I’m sure Mack ensured I’ll never be able to work as one again.”
“Fuck.” Elias tightens his arm around me, seeping that warmth right through to my bones, and he kisses the top of my head. “If there’s anyone who can figure this mess out, it’s you.”
At least someone believes in me.
***
After going through the story once again with my mother, since I promised her I would over a cup of tea, I’m mentally and physically exhausted. Crying has never drained me more than it did today, and it feels as though there’s still this large weight pulling me under another fit of tears that I don’t know if I could handle.
I press a quick kiss to her cheek, claim I need a nap, and then quickly make my way upstairs and into what used to be my bedroom when I lived here. It’s not as exciting as it used to be when I was younger, no longer eliciting the giddiness I’d normally get over the bare-chested celebrities taped above my bed.
Why didn’t she ever get rid of things here?
I shiver at the reminder of my younger and naive self but relax into the mattress with a heavy sigh. Even with sleep threatening me, I still find the nerve to pull my phone out and go to my contacts, where I put Ryker’s name.
I quickly scroll down to his name before I chicken out and decide against contacting him – it will only make me feel better if I get answers from him. I need to know if he would’ve watched me walk out or fought to keep me around instead.
I’m not sure why I need to know that since it could only make the heartbreak feel ten times worse, but I do, and I’m not going to try rationalizing it with myself.
Getting a response from him would’ve been the better outcome.
Not an automatic response back saying that my message couldn’t be delivered. To make matters worse, I click the call button, and I’m immediately hit by an automated female voice letting me know that the number is no longer in service.
I’ll never be able to talk to him again… and there goes even more of my fragile heart.
21
Ryker
