Page 47

Chapter Forty-Seven

S ometimes, I think I became a teacher to hold onto whatever part of my inner child had been lost to me at the expense of my mother’s drinking.

School had always been safe. Predictable. Structured. I didn’t have to worry about what anyone was doing but myself. In fact, there were adults there to worry about me.

Teachers who noticed if I came without a lunch or walked me down to the cafeteria in the morning to make sure I was eating breakfast.

People who cared about me. People who were responsible. Who made me feel safe. I think some part of me wanted to return the favor, to be that for some other child out there.

And it was true that it still was a safe haven of sorts for me. Kids were gentle in a way that adults weren’t. They hadn’t yet been burned by the world and hadn’t learned yet that they had the power to hurt and be hurt by others in ways that a band-aid wouldn’t fix.

But the second I walked out of school for the day, I heard a voice that made every feeling of safety disappear completely.

“,” Dave said, standing in the parking lot outside of my school.

I stared at him, feeling panic settle over me as I thought of an escape route. I could go back inside and wait for him to leave. I could try to book it past him to get to my car and hopefully speed away, but there was always the chance of him coming back another day.

Besides, I was tired of running. Of avoiding confrontation. Especially from someone like him. Whatever he had to say wouldn’t be able to affect me because I wasn’t giving him any power over me any longer.

I knew it when I finally let myself look at him. The memory of the pain was there, but though I thought seeing him would make the wound reopen, I was slightly surprised to realize that it hadn’t.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“I’ve been waiting for you to call,” he said, standing there as if I should have a response for whatever the hell he meant by that.

“Why would I call?” I asked, dumbfounded. “We broke up, remember?”

“Yeah, but I thought,” he started. “I don’t know. Maybe it was a mistake.”

His words stopped me dead in my tracks.

A mistake.

The word settled over me.

Had it been a mistake? I’d been with Dave for six of the most formative years of my life. The period between adolescence and adulthood, when I was becoming my own person, discovering who I was and what I wanted.

Some version of me would’ve married the man in front of me, but now? She felt far away in the deep crevices of the past. She certainly wasn’t present for this conversation.

“Don’t you think so?” he asked, realizing I didn’t have a response. “Haven’t you missed me?”

“No,” I admitted.

“No?” he countered. “We were together for years, Cass. I thought that meant something to you.”

“It didn’t mean anything to you when you dumped me over the phone and told me to find somewhere else to live,” I snapped.

“I told you, it was a mistake. I didn’t realize how much I needed you.”

“I don’t want someone who needs to lose me to realize they want me.

“Give me a break here, Cass,” he pleaded. “We’d been together so long. It’s normal to want to know what else is out there.”

When he said it, I realized that if it weren’t for Liam, I probably would’ve believed him. I would’ve sat here and let him convince me that I should take him back. I would’ve listened to him explain how, after he’d gone out and been with other women, he realized I was who he truly wanted.

But now that I knew what it felt like to be cared about genuinely and completely? I couldn’t fool myself into thinking Dave was what I wanted.

“I can’t,” I said. “You were right to break up with me. Our relationship—it wasn’t right. We weren’t right for each other.”

I didn’t tell him that I realized that because of how right it did feel with someone who I wasn’t even dating. But even if Liam disappeared out of the picture forever, being alone was better than being with a person who I never felt on equal footing with.

“Does that hockey guy really have you wrapped around his finger that tightly?” Dave snapped as if he had read the direction my thoughts had gone to. “We’re broken up for a minute, and you jump right into bed with the next available guy?”

At first, I figured he’d seen the pictures. Heard the rumors swirling on the Internet, and then it all made sense. He didn’t want me until he thought someone else did. And that hurt more than anything because it wasn’t even true.

“It’s not like that,” I explained, not wanting to let him believe the lie or rub it in his face that I’d moved on with someone else. I just wanted him to be securely in the past. “He’s not—we’re not,” I trailed off, not knowing how to explain. “Liam and I are friends, that’s it. He’s Maggie’s brother. He offered me a place to stay when you told me to get lost.”

“That’s not what he said.” He snorted viciously.

“ What? ” I drew back. “When did you see Liam?”

Half of me was convinced it was some type of mental warfare that Dave was weaponizing against me, but I couldn’t see the point of it. On the other hand, I couldn’t understand why Liam would ever lie to Dave like that and not tell me about it.

“At some hockey game a few months ago,” he said. “I figured that you’d get tired of him eventually and come back to me, but apparently, I was wrong. What, are you just after the guy with the fattest wallet, now?”

“I told you,” I bit out. “I’m not with Liam.”

“And I told you to cut the bullshit because he told me himself that you were.”

I stilled. “What are you talking about?”

“Oh, he didn’t mention it to you? How he punched me in the face after warning me to stay away from you? Nice guy, you’ve got there, by the way.”

I would’ve denied it. I would’ve told Dave to his face that he was a liar, but I couldn’t because I remembered the articles that came out about the fight that Liam had gotten into. I remembered Maggie bringing it up herself.

I just didn’t know the guy in question was Dave.

I had a million questions running through my head. Why did Liam punch him? Why did he lie about us dating? Why didn’t he tell me about any of this?

But I didn’t want answers from Dave, which was strange because he was probably the person I’d spent more time with than anyone else in my whole life.

But he wasn’t the person I felt closest to anymore. He wasn’t the person I cared about.

That was Liam.

“I have to go,” I said, walking past him to get to my car.

“Come on, ,” he yelled. “You can’t just walk away. You’re throwing away everything we had!”

Without wasting my breath for another second on Dave, I drove away, leaving him exactly where he belonged. Behind me.