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I glanced down and without a curtain of tears to hide the filth from my sight, I could see them clearly. Bile rose in my throat and as repugnant as they were, I needed to put Gabriel and his future before my own bleak one.
“There’s someone else,” I replied, and I was greeted by silence until he let out a string of curses that made me wince. “I’m sorry,” I replied, only angering him further.
“You tell me that you found someone else and just say that you’re sorry like that is supposed to fix everything. Who in the hell are you, Harper? What the hell is going on in Portland?”
If he knew, he would know I was damaged and broken, the pieces unable to ever fix themselves. “I’ve met someone here. Long distance relationships aren’t my thing.”
“Liar,” he spat out. “Something’s wrong. I know it. You would never destroy our plan. I know you, Harper.”
While it hadn’t been my choice, it was my destiny. The one I had once deluded myself into thinking would come true was just some childish fantasy. The world was dark, and it sucked. I did, too, especially since I was about to break the heart of the only boy I’d ever loved. He deserved better than just pieces of me, so I pulled up my messenger and attached two or three of the lewd photographs.
“You don’t know me as well as you think. It’s over between us. I just sent you all the proof you need. Please don’t call here again.”
At that, I disconnected the call and waited until I got his read notification. I could see that he was typing and doing the only thing I could think to do, I blocked him, essentially hammering the final nail in the coffin of our future. I dropped my phone onto the mattress and grabbed the nearby pillow.
I placed it over my head and screamed as loud as I could, glad the thick cotton muffled most of it. The love of my life... my soul mate... my one and only destiny would now hate me, and for good reason, even if the one I gave him was a lie.
My tears turned from a steady trickle to a flood and I curled up in a ball on the bed, then cried into the pillow as I had done my first night here. I had just found out hours before that I’d lost my parents, and now because of my own actions, I had lost Gabriel. I couldn’t tell which loss was greater as I seemed to grieve equally hard for all of them.
Eventually as they had done that first night, the tears dried up and I was left dejected. The creaking of the door had me squeezing my eyes shut. It knew who it was. It was him. He was here to punish me. Maybe he would see me sleeping and leave me alone for one night.
As the mattress under me dipped from his weight, I knew he wouldn’t. He couldn’t. I was a bad girl... a whore... a burden... I needed to be punished, and realizing the sin I’d just committed, I didn’t even try to fight him off this time because whatever he doled out, I deserved.
HARPER
PORTLAND, OREGON
NINE YEARS LATER
“This offseason has been an extremely lucrative one for all pro quarterback, Noah Capshaw. ESPN is reporting a colossal extension has been reached which will keep him in Chicago for many years to come. He’s now expected to report to training camp next month where he’ll get to work with first round draft pick, wide receiver—”
I turned off the television, but I couldn’t help smiling. Noah was Gabriel’s best friend, and a boy I had known since third grade. There had always been a group of us, including Charlene Mitchell, Leon Hargreaves, Noah, Gabriel, and me. We were all inseparable throughout middle and high school. Even though I had stopped talking to all of them almost a decade ago, I still liked to see how well they’d turned out. That often did little good for me.
Seeing Gabriel was always like a sucker punch. Despite my being the one to end things between us, I’d never stopped loving him. I had dated others since then, but no one would fill my heart the way he had, and still did if I was being honest.
I’d eventually escaped the hell that had become my life, but I stayed in Oregon and was determined to forge a new one for myself. After graduation, I enrolled at Oregon State University, and I spent the first year or so trying to ignore how I kept seeing Gabriel in all the empty faces on campus like that pop song used in a popular book turned movie.
When I would be confronted with his success, as I just was at hearing about Noah’s new contract, it always seemed to sadden me and for more than the reminder of what I had lost. All Gabriel had wanted to do when he’d gotten older was to be a successful athlete. When I had heard about the accident that nearly cost him his life, it’d gutted me.
I had been tempted more than once to call to check up on him, but what good would that do. He believed I had moved away and replaced him in months, and telling him the truth then wouldn’t have served a purpose.
It didn’t mean I didn’t feel terrible for his loss, even if he now was just as big of a success, or maybe even more of one, than he would’ve been had his dreams been realized. I just kept him in my heart as I had all this time, and I’d made sure my love for him remained where the rest of my secrets did.
“I just wish it wasn’t so hard sometimes,” I said absently, then decided to stop thinking about him altogether. I had a lot more pressing issues to concern myself with, and a trip down memory lane wasn’t one of them.
“Are you sure your parents didn’t leave you anything?” my college friend turned lawyer had asked when I’d told him about my parents a few months ago.
“I was told by the lawyer that there was nothing other than the estate which my uncle sold to be able to afford to take me in for those sixteen months.”
What was almost a year and a half seemed a hell of a lot longer considering what I’d endured, but just like my unrequited love for Gabriel, those dark secrets were firmly cemented deep in the recesses of my mind.
“It doesn’t make any sense. Was this the attorney that handled their affairs?” he’d asked me, and I’d shaken my head.
“It was my uncle’s lawyer.”
I could see he’d believed there to be more to it. I supposed my uncle could’ve lied to me. I’d been distraught about losing my parents, Gabriel, and coupled with the move and everything else that happened afterward, I could see why Jackson thought there was more to it.
Ever since he had planted the seeds of doubt into my head, I’d looked into things. Come to find out, there was an inheritance, and as luck would have it, I was supposed to have received it at twenty-five unless I’d married sooner. I was single, and my twenty-sixth birthday had just passed. The records were sealed and as he tried to valiantly use his own legal resources to help me, I continued to do what I could on my own.
