Page 44

AJ

Fuck.

I stared back at Sydney. The mention of Rosalie’s name dragging me right back to a place I’d been trying to get out of for months now.

It was actually kind of funny. They said time was supposed to numb shit like this. But it hadn’t.

Not with Rosalie.

Even when I pretended I didn’t care or tried to keep myself busy so I didn’t let my thoughts linger about her for too long, she still crossed my mind.

All the times we had shared in the front seat of my lowrider, how her hair looked in the sunlight, the way her laugh carried itself around the room. How she controlled her car and gave every man she raced against a run for their money.

I missed her every damn day.

I missed her voice. I missed the way she had said my name, always so sweet. The way her blue eyes lit up when she talked about painting cars. How she looked at me when she was in my arms, like she trusted me with her whole damn heart.

Being with Rosalie had made me want to be a better man—in a lot of ways.

Hell, sometimes, I even caught myself thinking about stupid shit I never thought I’d have. A place to call home and someone to come back to.

Someone who actually gave a damn about me .

When I was with her, I’d thought maybe that there was more to life than just where I had come from.

But it’d been too much to hope for. In the end, I’d only dragged her down by letting her into my life.

“There isn’t much to talk about,” I grumbled under my breath.

She folded her arms over her chest, not believing a word I’d said.

“Nope. It’s not that simple. I know she means more to you than you keep trying to lead on. AJ, you’re here in Japan, but your mind isn’t. I see you check her profile sometimes. I see the look on your face when you scroll through your pictures. You miss her,” Sydney said.

“It doesn’t matter. She’s moved on,” I said, crossing my ankles and shoving my hands into my hoodie pocket. I grabbed my phone and dragged it out.

She has photos with the fucker to prove it, I thought as I stared at the black screen.

“You don’t know that for sure. And you still won’t until you talk to her.” Sydney turned to face me, her eyes dead serious.

“Unblock her,” Sydney said.

I looked down at my phone in my hand. A thousand things were running through my mind at that moment, but I knew she was right. It was time to open myself up to see if Rosalie had truly moved on, like her social showed. Or was she in the same headspace as me?

Before I could change my mind, I clicked her profile and hit Unblock.

I could never have prepared myself for what happened next.

My phone blew up.

Message after message flooded through.

Missed call.

Rosalie

AJ, answer your phone!

Don’t go!

Missed call.

Missed call.

Rosalie

You can’t do this! Not after everything we’ve been through! Please, just answer the phone, babe!

Please, please come back. We can talk about everything. I promise if I did something wrong, I can fix it. I love you.

The ones right after I had left were as I expected.

She’d been devastated, confused, angry. She didn’t know why I’d left, continuously saying how I could just tell her the truth about what happened and she would understand.

To please respond to her. Fuck, the ones where she pleaded with me to reply hit even harder.

I was hesitant to keep scrolling past those first messages.

What if she got over me and messaged me about how happy she was that I’d left her? How much better off she was without me? How she wishes I’d done it sooner? I’m not ready to hear shit like that from her.

“This was a mistake,” I said as I locked my phone and shoved it into my hoodie pocket.

Sydney reached out and grabbed my arm.

“What did she say?” she asked, her voice soft.

“It’s not what she said; it’s what she might say,” I said. I had just admitted one of my biggest fears out loud. Not being loved by the woman I loved anymore.

Sydney gently squeezed my hand. She gave me a look that showed that she understood, but she glanced down at my pocket and back.

“You’ll never know if you don’t look. And not knowing, so far, hasn’t really been working out for you. I know it might be hard, but do it for you, AJ,” she said with a small smile.

I know she’s right. It’s just … she can’t still be into me. She’s got a new guy, and she has been with him for a long time now. I bet she hasn’t even messaged me for months.

But it was eating away at me. I couldn’t stop thinking about her being with another man.

Is he treating her the way she deserves?

Does he know that she loves the color blue?

Does she moan with him the same way she did with me as he rubs his hands down her body?

Do his lips cut her off when she gets louder as she gets closer to an orgasm?

Does she wake up every day in his arms, in our bed?

“God dammit!” I growled as I yanked my phone from my pocket again.

Sydney let her hand drop, and she stood up, walking over to the edge of the koi pond as I unlocked my phone once more.

I scrolled down to the next message. More begging me to come home and to answer her. That was when there was the first gap between messages.

Months had passed, and the one that flashed on my screen broke something in me to read. I read it in chunks. Each time I had to look away, I felt like breaking something or breaking down.

Rosalie

AJ, tell me why! Tell me why you really left. Please? Because you need to tell me how I’m supposed to move on with my life without you, AJ, when you are the one who highlighted so much of what I loved in life.

Because I was doing my best to keep you safe! Dammit, Rosalie, you’d almost died because of me. How did you expect me to act like that never happened and continue to go about our lives like I wasn’t the worst thing in yours? Your life had been better before I was in it, baby.

I wanted to reach through the phone and tell her everything. The reason I had taken her dad’s offer, why I couldn’t risk her getting hurt again. But I couldn’t, not until I knew the rest of what she had to say.

Rosalie

How am I supposed to go on without you, like you never existed? I don’t think I can.

I can’t either, baby girl. I think about you. Every. Fucking. Day.

I kept reading, my hand clenched around my phone as I scrolled further down the message.

Rosalie

I don’t want to fall asleep, thinking about your arms pulling me close anymore!

If you aren’t actually here, why won’t your memory let me move on?

I want to! I don’t want to keep sitting here, wishing you would walk into the custom shop every moment of the day I’m there.

So, if you really love me, then tell me you miss me as much as I miss you.

Because I’m done if you don’t. I’m going to move on and leave you behind.

She’d still missed me when she sent this?

You were haunted by me? I wouldn’t let you move on? What about you? I see you everywhere I go. In cars that pass by. In the colors of the sunset. When I smell strawberries. You follow me around Japan like my shadow.

But the last part of the message made my heart stop.

Rosalie

Because I can’t keep waiting for you.

“Fuck!” I shouted, standing up. I threw my phone on the grass next to where Sydney was.

She picked it up, brushing it off as she turned toward me, concerned.

She didn’t have to ask me what I’d read because I couldn’t hold in how pissed it made me.

“She said she couldn’t keep waiting for me. That was months ago, Syd! What’s the point of looking at more? It’s probably just her telling me to fuck off,” I said loudly, pacing up and down the path by the pond.

I leaned down and picked a rock, tossing it across the water. But instead of skipping, it sank under the dark ripples. I growled as I fumed, thinking about her moving on with her life.

I’d wanted her to. When I left, I hoped she would find a guy to settle with and stay out of danger. But reading about it actually happening? I knew I had been lying to myself from the beginning.

I never wanted you to move on! Shit, you’re the only woman I’ve ever loved. The only person I’ve ever cared about. Why the fuck was I willing to let you go in the first place?

“You don’t know that,” Sydney said.

“If I was her, that’s what I would say,” I snapped.

Sydney didn’t deserve to be talked to like this. I wasn’t angry at her. I was mad at myself for getting into this position.

“And you’re going to let the chance of something scare you away? I thought you were a lot braver than that, AJ. Where is the man who faced down the yakuza with me? Because he wouldn’t have been scared of a little text message and a big what-if,” Sydney said, pushing my buttons.

She knew exactly what that would do to me. I couldn’t let a challenge like that slide. So, even if I was unsure about what I might read, I was still going to read on.

She held out my phone, and I stalked over to her. I grabbed it and walked back to the bench, sitting down and opening it back up.

There was another big time jump between that text and her next. I was surprised by the time stamp on this one. She had sent it less than two weeks ago.

Rosalie

Mom told me about the real reason you’d left.

I stopped reading. Shocked. It was her dad that I’d met up with and the one who paid me to get the fuck out of town. But I never thought her mom liked me much either. To hear she had told Rosalie why I left wasn’t something I’d expected. I kept reading.

Rosalie

I wish you had just told me you were afraid of me getting hurt.

We could have figured it out together instead of you and my parents deciding my life for me.

I wish we could sit down and talk again.

I really wish you hadn’t blocked me and we could actually talk about this. I … I miss you so much some days.

She isn’t mad about why I did it? She missed me?

I felt my anger drain out of me.

I flicked back over to her social media. Her profile still said she was with this K guy. But she hadn’t posted since before she sent that last text.