Page 69 of Craving Consequences

Not once has Lachlan or Van told me they loved me in return. Even when I said it, there had been nothing from him. I know they care about me. I know they want me. But maybe Lauren’s right. Maybe that’s all this ever was .

But that’s fine, I quickly tell myself. It’s what I’ve wanted from the start.

A relationship between us would never work anyway.

Still, it hurts.

“Maybe we just need some space,” Lauren continues. “We’re both hurt and if we keep picking at this right now, we’re going to say something we can’t take back.”

I nod slowly. “Yeah,” is the best response I can come up with.

Her blue eyes meet mine. “I love you.”

I sigh. “I love you, too.”

With a single, measured bob of her head, Lauren opens her door and slips out. She doesn’t slam it, doesn’t storm off. She simply walks away, and I’m left staring after her with a throbbing ache in my chest.

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My home belongs to a stranger.

It’s a foreign place that no longer holds the warmth it used to. Everything from the dark windows to the silence that seems to pulse off its walls, I feel nothing as I shove open my car door and shuffle out.

It’s no longer mine, I realize vaguely, distantly, somewhere at the back of my mind. The second I signed it over to Teddy, it ceased to be home. It’s just a place. A box I used to know. The realization only hurts more as I amble up the stairs and push through the front door.

It clicks shut behind me with the softest sound in the world, and yet, it’s a gunshot reverberating through the hall. The house. It rattles the windows. My bones.

Silence is a suffocating blanket swaddling me. The house is too still, the air, different like everything is holding its breath. It’s so intense, I’m terrified of exhaling. Of moving.

I stand still and broken, and empty.

I stand with sweat and forest still clinging to my skin and hair.

Tears dry on my cheeks. I stare at the hallway.

The coat rack still holding my dad’s summer blazer.

The rug Lauren and I picked up at a flea market in Mayfield.

The photograph of my parents and me on the side table from our vacation to Maine.

It hits me then.

Everything all at once. An onslaught of guilt, pain, sorrow, bone deep agony.

The keys clatter from my fingers with a metallic rattle that explodes through my system.

My legs fold. There’s no warning, just an absolute collapse as I hit the floor hard on knees already scarred from my earlier abuse.

My good palm catches me, and still, the collision rattles across and down my injured shoulder.

Pain bolts through the fracture, but I feel nothing as I’m squeezed from all sides.

The sobs rip through me. Big, gasping, hollowing sounds that tear from my throat in heaving pants. It’s distant through the sea of blood roaring between my ears. The high shriek of whistles announcing the dismantling of my sanity.

My good hand fists into the rug like it can somehow keep me from falling apart. I’m trembling, a violent quake I can’t stop as waves of realization slam up over me.

I was almost raped.

I nearly died.

I committed a crime so heinous that if anyone ever found out ... if Lachlan ever...

I vomit.

The hot explosion of my stomach empties across the back of my hand. It soaks into the rug. I heave and gasp around the second attack.

Still, even through the assault on my already tender gut, it’s not remorse for my actions that have me soaked in sweat and blinded by tears.

It’s the knowledge that Lachlan will never forgive me.

He will hate me on a level I may deserve.

My fear has nothing to do with a lifetime in prison, but the possibility of him looking at me like I’m dead to him .

My breath wheezes around the stuttering hitch in my chest. Panic claws up my throat and I try to process through it, but I can’t. My vision tunnels. The house spins. I feel like I’m dying in slow motion, sinking into something black and bottomless.

And there’s no one to blame this time.

I made my choices. I created this version of myself out of the betrayal I had to endure and ... what? It resolved nothing.

I lost Lauren.

I lost Van and Lachlan.

I lost my town and community.

But Bron is gone, the voice in my head points out, maybe to be helpful, but all I can think in return is so what?

Was it worth it? Did he simply win in the end? It’s hard to say when I’m the one sitting in my own sick, battered, bruised and completely alone.

You saved a lot of other women, the voice persists.

There is that, I suppose.

It hadn’t been my intention in the beginning.

I hadn’t been aware of that side of Bron when I wrote my list. My goal was to remove him from my life, cut him out like a cancer.

I wanted him isolated and alone, torn from everything and everyone.

I wanted to take it all away the way he took my best friend, my money, time, energy and self-worth.

I wanted to mentally dismantle him the same way he dismantled my confidence and self-esteem.

So, I deliberately showed his true colors to the town. To Lachlan. I intentionally goaded him, let him explode before an audience. I made sure it went on record that he was unhinged, abusive, and violent.

I took away his chances of getting the full-time position at Hearth Realty. I made sure the person he hated most got what Bron wanted, even if it cost me my home.

I took away his money like he took away mine. Technically, I suppose I got my money back. Most of it. I knew Lachlan would never let that slide. He’s a proud man with morals. And I knew he had access to Bron’s inheritance.

Once his job was gone, his home with Lachlan, his income stream, I made sure everyone in town knew what a deadbeat piece of shit he was, destroying any chance he had of rebuilding in Jefferson. Not even the friends he would mock me in front of would be brave enough to go against the hive.

Even if today never happened, even if he hadn’t done what he did, Bron’s time was at an end. He made the mistake of letting that temper drive the last nail in his coffin.

And mine.

I crawl to my feet, feeling no better, but coming to a morbid sort of acceptance. The quote from Confucius springs to mind as I stagger lamely to the stairs .

“Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.”

Where was that thought process when I started? Hindsight truly is twenty-twenty. Still, again, I have zero remorse in my actions. I only regret the people I hurt.

Except Bron.

Fuck him.

I step into the doorway of my parent’s bedroom and stare at the bed.

Stare at the rumpled sheets cast to the foot of the bed as if they’d woken up in a hurry to find me.

I have to resist the urge to crawl up and bury myself in their lingering scent.

In the prickling need to find my phone and call them, beg them to come over.

I will call them.

Not yet. But soon.

Once I’ve put distance between us, so I don’t have to see their faces when I tell them.

Enough space that they can’t just show up at my door to stop me.

I know I owe them more than that, but I also love them enough not to hurt them anymore.

They’ll be angry, but they’ll understand.

They’ll move on. They’ll forget about me.

It’s better this way.

Plus, I need to think. I need to process everything I’ve done and had done to me. I haven’t had a chance to really think about anything for a week. I keep throwing myself into crazy situations without a shred of forethought .

And I know if I stop and think, if I allow myself to ask what it is I truly want, I know my immediate want and need is them.

I would want them. I would beg and pray and wish for them. To have them. For them to be mine forever.

But I’m a realist. This isn’t one of my books. The girl doesn’t get both men in real life, not when it means having them could destroy them and I can never be that selfish.

So, it’s up to me to fix the mess I made, even if it means breaking my heart and theirs.