Page 87 of Play for Power (Central Sparks #3)

“Look, I came to get away from all the drama. So, if you don’t mind, I’d like to be left alone,” I mumble the words, not able to look her in the eyes. Because I know that rage will burn me where I stand.

“No.” She sighs, and I hear her shuffle around.

I spin from the stove, turning it off and raising a brow at where she now sits at the counter. “No?”

“You heard me. I came to help you get your head out of your fucking ass and do something.” She emphasizes with a fist to the countertop.

“God, you’re scary for a little thing.”

“I can get scarier, don’t test me.” I swear she growls the words as she scowls at me.

Suddenly grateful for the counter that separates us.

Seeing Addy’s fiery side though? All it does is make me think of Rosie.

I absently rub my chest as my eyes find the floor, willing that ache to just fuck off already.

I hear Addy release a heavy breath and then she’s no longer at the counter but standing in front of me, her eyes are big green saucers as she crosses her arms.

“I’m sorry, Caleb. But you’re being a total d-bag.”

“Come again?” I sputter, letting my eyes find hers properly this time.

“You heard me. You can’t let her go through with this. Caleb, she’s fucking miserable.”

“I can’t make her do anything.” I try to spin in the direction of the stove, not wanting to look at Addison while she lectures me. But with a hand to my shoulder, she shoves me, forcing me to keep looking at her.

“No? But you sure as shit can show her how to make the right decision. You need to show up!” She throws her hands in the air and I feel my jaw set, not wanting to explode on the little spit fire.

“You need to show her that a life with you is better than one without. And I know that’s so fucking cheesy, but she is crying, Caleb.

Crying! Rosie Garcia, who doesn’t show an ounce of emotion, has cried herself to sleep every night this week.

And I know because I’m there every night to make sure she’s eating.

I have never, in the twenty years I have known her, seen her like this.

” Each word is like another laceration to my soul and I hate, fucking loathe, to hear them.

“How can I beat her family. She’d be picking me over them and I’m not idiot enough to ever think she would.”

“You know nothing!” Addison shouts at me, her hands shoving at my chest. “Blood is not everything. They treat her like a commodity and she believes there is no other way.” Addison closes her eyes on a deep breath before looking back at me.

I swear there are flames that lick at the depths of her eyes.

“She told me…she told Casey and I everything. About her father about that asshole Mickey. And she believes there is no other way. Show her that there is.” She finishes on a breath, looking a lot more exhausted than when she came in here.

“Honestly, Addy, I don’t know how. I thought…I thought how we were…I thought it was perfect, that it was right.” All I can picture is Rosie and her red-rimmed, wet eyes as she pokes around a plate of food, utterly miserable.

“You still love her?” she asks gently.

“You’d have to cut out my heart to make me stop,” I whisper the words, still unable to meet her eyes and feeling the reluctant sting behind my own. After a beat of silence, I force myself to look up at Addy and she has a bit of a curl to her lip as she blinks at me.

“That was graphic.” She half chuckles, her face softening into sympathy. “She loves you, too, you know.”

“She told you?” Because I’d been dying to hear her say the words to me. I’d told her. In the heat of everything, I’d told her that I loved her. I don’t regret it, and I would never take it back, but I hate that it happened in the moments when she was slipping through my fingers.

Addy pouts at my question, shaking her head.

“I don’t think she knows how to,” I say quietly.

“That’s where you’re wrong.” Addy smiles softly at me as her eyes grow a little wet.

“She knows how to love, fiercely too. I’ve felt it, so has Casey.

She loves us with her entire being and we love her the same.

She knows how to love, Caleb. But she only knows the kind of love that doesn’t need work.

The kind of love she’d never lose. That is always in the background and grows over years of patience, full promises, and shared loneliness.

She knows she has me and Casey for eternity, no matter what happens, nothing takes that away.

” She smiles again, a little wider, despite the sadness growing in her eyes.

“But the kind of love she’s found with you is scary.

It’s the kind of love that can lift you so high, the fall breaks you.

It’s the kind of love that changes your soul.

It rearranges priorities and dreams. It forces you to grow, to adapt and change.

It allows you to be free without the fear of being lost.” She wipes somewhat angrily at a tear she drops as she grumbles to herself.

“She always needs to be in control, Caleb. But that kind of love? It upends everything. It makes you so completely and utterly out of control, it can be hard to hold steady. When she was faced with the choice to keep herself in control when the rest of her life was spinning out of it, or to hand herself over to someone she knows she’d get lost in, with no idea how it ends?

Surely you can find some grace inside you to forgive her for saving herself.

To take her hand and love her back. Love her more than you hate her for making a mistake. ”

“I could never hate her,” I breathe the angry words. The truth. It wouldn’t matter what happened, hate is something I’m incapable of when it comes to her.

“Good. So, stop feeling sorry for yourself. You need to go and get her. If you let her do this, I will never forgive you.”

I look her over for a moment. Feeling a touch proud that Rosie has a friend as intense as Addy. That someone is willing to fight for her like this. How she ever thought she was alone when she has Addy and Casey in her corner is beyond me.

Her words soak into my skin, and the understanding I had started to feel about why Rosie couldn’t pick me quickly turns into a panic—panic that I have just let her fall through my grasp.

She isn’t simply slipping; she is tumbling, and instead of catching her, of holding her through it, I let her go.

I let her crash, and I did nothing to stop it.

That feeling weighs as heavy as lead in my stomach.

“When did you get all, like, inspirational and shit?” I raise a playful brow, hoping to erase some of the panic that is growing rapidly in my chest.

Addison huffs an exhausted laugh. “Therapy. Like, so, so much therapy.” I smile when she does and we laugh a little.

“Maybe I should do that. The whole therapy thing.” I grunt, rolling my eyes at the pleased gleam returning to hers.

“Everyone should.” She pats me on the shoulder as she wanders over to the stove. “Smells great, can’t wait to eat.”

Addy ends up staying for dinner and drinks, and she wanders for most of the afternoon.

I let her, if anything to give her a bit of privacy, seeing as she hasn’t been here since everything with her family went down.

It’s nice company, actually, if a bit odd.

I haven’t spent…well, any alone time with Addison.

Though it’s mostly because Noah is obsessed with her and is always there.

It’s kind of nice to talk to her on this level, to joke with her, and ask her about this place.

She leaves when it’s late, assuring me she has somewhere close to stay and that Noah is meeting her. Apparently, he didn’t want to intrude on what he’d called Caleb regroup time. I had rolled my eyes dramatically enough that she giggled.

But before long, it is just me with my thoughts, me stewing over everything that happened.

I want, more than anything, to pretend like none of it even happened.

To go running back to NYC, to find Rosie lazily napping in my bed, and to climb in and hold her against me.

And never let her go. But that’s foolish.

Because it did happen, and she won’t be at my place because she chose someone else.

She didn’t pick me. And maybe I’m being childish, but that’s the part I’m struggling to get past.

I just wish I’d be good enough for someone to pick me.

The next few days fly by. Somehow Addison’s little visit seemed to have settled my rattled nerves a little, and I’m glad to say I stayed off the whiskey.

I went for hikes, swam in the lake, star gazed.

I may have moped around thinking about Rosie more than I should have, but it wasn’t until Friday, after I’d spent the last few days with just my thoughts alone, with nothing but my wounded heart to keep me company, that I turned over everything Addy had said.

She loves you too.

I really want to believe that. I want to hold on to the fact that while we were playing around, getting closer, and I was hurtling my heart off a cliff, I want to know that she did too.

That I wasn’t alone in feeling like I was losing my footing because I was suddenly feeling a whole lot of things I’d never let myself feel before.

It’s the kind of love that can lift you so high, the fall breaks you…It rearranges priorities and dreams…forces you to grow, to adapt and change. It allows you to be free without the fear of being lost.

That last part was on repeat. Free, without being lost. That’s how she made me feel.

Rosie hasn’t been free a day in her life. Fuck.

All this time, I wonder if she imagined her freedom would come with being lost. Like there is no purpose, nothing in her world. I imagine she thought there wouldn’t be, given her father had strings controlling every aspect of her life. Her job, her home, her money.

Fuck!

I really am a fool.

I’m out here licking my wounds over not being chosen like some fourth-grader at a sports day, when all Rosie’s wanted is to be free and not lose control of her life. And instead of helping her find it, of loving her despite the complications, I let the fall break her.

The realization has me pacing the ground, probably wearing a hole in the damn floor, but I can’t help but panic. Because tomorrow is their engagement party. I need her to know she’d never be lost with me. That I’m an idiot, that I love her, we’re in this together.

I don’t hesitate any longer; I pack my shit and head straight for New York City.