Page 45 of Sunflower Persona (Classic City Romance #2)

Gage

“ W hat the fuck?” Nathan’s voice carries down the hallway, followed by a series of loud scrapes and bangs.

A moment of silence follows, but it’s broken by Karis’s frantic shout of my name. Glass crunches under their feet as they move throughout my apartment.

“Come on, you asshole. Fucking talk to me,” she calls out as her shadowy form passes in front of the doorway.

I’m a spineless cunt for not answering her, especially when I know exactly what moment is replaying in her head. I can’t, though. Not because I don’t want to, but because I don’t think I’m physically capable. My body is a lead weight, so heavy I can’t even lift my head.

“Fuck. Morgan, go check Cutter’s, and Nathan can hit Double Teep. I’ll head out to the botanical gardens, but if he isn’t there—” Her voice catches in a way that’s unlike her. “Fuck, we won’t cross that bridge until we get there, yeah?”

More shadows dance over the threshold. So close, but too far to notice me tucked away behind the shower curtain. I’m too exhausted to question how I ended up in the bathtub in the first place. At least I’m still clothed and not completely soaked through.

The flurry of motion outside continues, but the world is spinning too much for me to keep track of it all. The door opens and closes more times than I can count, and I let out a sigh of relief as I’m alone once again.

Loneliness is the only thing I deserve.

My body sags, and my fingers loosen their grip on the bottle.

Huh, I don’t remember having that two minutes ago.

The empty glass falls to the linoleum tile with a crash but doesn’t shatter as it hits the ground and rolls away.

“Gage?” Karis calls out.

Looks like I’m not so alone after all.

The shadow makes a reappearance in the doorframe and freezes. My friend sucks in a deep breath and mutters “Please don’t be dead” as she flips on the light.

Its brightness shoots through my head like an ice pick, and I flinch away with a groan.

“Thank God,” she breathes, and rushes over to my side, pulling the curtain open more than the small crack that let me see out.

Towering over me, she assesses my state with worried eyes. From the stinging on my arms and feet, I’m probably cut to shit, but nothing feels particularly deep or intentional.

I’m counting that as a win.

“What the hell happened?” she asks as she sits on the edge of the tub.

I try to answer her, but my tongue won’t work. All that comes out is a slurred, incoherent mess. She sighs and grabs a rag from the rack and wipes the layer of sweat and drool from my face before picking a piece of debris off my shirt.

“Stay here,” she commands, as if I have any other option.

That cursed light stays on in her absence, but darkness pulses at the edge of my vision as unconsciousness creeps back in. My friend’s tired voice telling the others to come back is the last thing that registers before I’m dragged under again.

When the next moment of lucidity comes, all three of them are crowded into my tiny bathroom. Karis is on the floor with her back against the tub, while Nathan leans against the wall and Morgan perches on the small countertop.

“Why didn’t he tell us?” Morgan asks.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Nathan asks with much more heat.

“It wasn’t my place,” Karis says. “He still has the occasional depressive episodes, but they are mostly managed, and they have been since before either of you knew him. There was no point in digging up bodies that have been buried for years if he didn’t want to.

Plus, how exactly would I go about telling you something like that?

I can’t just say ‘Oh, by the way, Gage used to be suicidal.’”

“Fine,” Nathan relents, “but knowing could have prepared us better for today.”

“I don’t think anything could have prepared us for today,” she whispers.

“Didn’t try to kill myself. Just drunk,” I slur.

All three heads snap in my direction.

“Well, you scared the crap out of us either way,” Morgan says.

I grumble something unintelligible as my eyes struggle to focus on their faces. There are too many eyes between them, or maybe it’s too many thems.

“Okay, he’s still useless. So what do we do now?” he asks.

“Clean up his mess and keep him from choking on his own vomit,” Karis supplies.

I want to protest that, but the mere mention of throwing up has nausea churning in my gut.

“And once he’s sobered up, I can beat the shit out of him for being a fucking idiot, right?” Nathan asks.

“Once he’s sober, you’ll have to get in line,” Karis replies.

“I’ll take care of Gage,” Morgan says. “It’s the least I can do after what he did for me last year.”

They grumble their agreement, leaving me with my sanest friend. He hops off the counter and comes to stand at the edge of the tub.

“You really screwed this one up,” he says with more pity than condemnation.

When I don’t respond, he shakes his head and sighs.

“Sorry about this, but you are covered in questionable liquids and smell worse than Cutter’s after a home game.”

His words make no sense until the spray of icy water pelts into me.

Payback is a fucking bitch.

***

Stabbing pain lances through my head, pulsating in time to the beat of my heart, and a wave of nausea rips through me. I crack one lid, but the bright glow from the overhead light is too much for me to bear. It sends another flash of pain into my skull, so intense my vision goes white.

What the fuck happened?

It’s been years since I’ve been this hungover.

With a groan, I grab the nearest pillow and use it to cover my head, smothering myself with Kori’s scent. For a moment, I find peace, but it shatters as everything comes back to me.

Meeting her parents.

Driving us back.

Brandy breaking down.

Spiraling.

Ending things.

Fuck .

I spring out of bed and sprint for the bathroom, as vomit that has nothing to do with my hangover rises in my throat.

The soles of my feet sting with every step as the skin around the shallow cuts tightens and tears them back open.

I don’t even know where they came from. With seconds to spare, I make it to kneel in front of the toilet bowl as all the contents of my stomach spill out.

“Welcome back to the land of the living,” Nathan says from the doorway.

His mouth is curled in a friendly smile, but his eyes burn with the anger he keeps locked under the surface. It’s an ire I deserve every smoldering second of. I grunt in acknowledgment and stand, wiping away the remaining mess from my lips.

“How are you feeling?” he asks.

“Like death.”

He nods, looks me over, and pulls his arm back before launching his fist at my face. The move is telegraphed. I could easily dodge it, but I lean into it instead, letting the full force of the blow land on my jaw. Whatever his reason, it’s probably deserved.

“That was for breaking Kori’s heart,” he says.

Scratch that. It was definitely deserved. I would let him beat me bloody if he wanted to, and it wouldn’t begin to make up for what I’ve done.

The mere mention of her name sends a pang of emotions through me so intense my knees nearly buckle. I didn’t expect letting her go to hurt this much. Her absence is a gaping, bleeding hole in my chest—a physical pain that steals my breath from my fucking lungs.

She’s gone.

No, I fucking threw her away. I ruined the only good thing in my fucked-up life like I always knew I would.

“What the hell happened, man?” he asks.

“I fucked up.” My voice cracks before I can finish the sentence.

Grimacing, he pulls me in for a hug, but my arms hang limply at my sides. He shouldn’t be giving me sympathy. He should be leaving me to wallow in the misery of my own making.

“Yeah, I figured that much out on my own,” he says as he pulls away.

“Where are Karis and Morgan?”

“Morgan had class, and Karis is covering your ‘brats.’”

“Shit.” I’ve lost a full day to my drunken stupor, and I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t preferable to this. Nathan was right; I’m a self-sabotaging bastard.

“Yup. And don’t think I’m letting you off the hook with an ‘I fucked up.’ Seriously, man, you scared the shit out of us. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Karis that freaked out.”

My chest tightens as my head hangs even lower with shame.

“Think you could give me a few minutes to freshen up before giving me the first degree?”

“Sure, man.” He claps me on the back before leaving me alone with my guilt.

Without my friend to distract me, my mind drifts back to Yellow.

My perfect sunflower woman. Is she handling this as poorly as I am?

I’m falling apart at the seams, and I’m not the one who got plucked from the soil and discarded like a weed.

She must be devastated. The thought of her going through that alone sends another wave of nausea washing over me, but this one I’m able to push back down.

I should be there with her.

I never should have hurt her in the first place.

What the fuck was I thinking yesterday? That’s right, I wasn’t, and I destroyed the only good thing in my life in the process. As if I didn’t hate myself enough already, now I have to live with this.

I can’t stand to look at myself in the mirror as I splash icy water over my face and brush the layers of grime off my teeth.

The clothes I woke up in are surprisingly clean, and not what I was wearing yesterday, so I throw them back on.

Someone must have forced me to change in the night, but I have no memory of it.

The last thing I remember fully is sitting on the floor in my kitchen, surrounded by chaos, with a fourth of the bottle of vodka left. After that, it’s only flashes.

The smell of coffee and cooking grease greets me as I open the door, and my stomach lets out an angry growl. The last time I ate anything was breakfast with the Wrights, and if Karis is covering my classes at the gym, that was over a day and a half ago.

Shit.

I follow my stomach out into the kitchen and find Nathan has made himself at home at my stove.

The room is cleaner than it should be—I was sober when I trashed it—even though some of my stuff is missing and nothing is in the exact right place.

I’ll add fixing my place up to the list of things I need to thank my friends for.

“You ready to talk?” Nathan asks as he sets a coffee mug on the too-empty counter and turns back to cooking.

I nod as I take a sip of the liquid gold in front of me.

“Okay. So talk. What the fuck were you thinking?”

“Which part? Making the worst decision of my life and ending things with the woman I love, or going on a bender?”

I choke on my next breath as the truth of those words weighs on me.

“Fuck, I love her.” The confession spilled out without conscious thought, but that doesn’t make it any less true. I’m in love with her…and I broke her heart.

A sharp pang radiates from that void in my chest.

Fuck.

“Both. But start with the first part,” my friend says.

“I was thinking that she deserves more than being saddled with me for the rest of her life. I was thinking that I was only going to hold her back.”

“So you were being an idiot,” he says.

“And a coward,” I agree.

“Glad you recognize that. So what are you going to do about it?”

“What can I do about it?”

I broke up with her. There’s no coming back from that.

“Fight for her, goddamnit,” Nathan growls. “Go to her and beg on your knees for forgiveness.”

“What if I don’t deserve her forgiveness?”

“If that’s your attitude about it, maybe you don’t.” He sighs and shakes his head. “But if you want to fix this, your window is closing.”

“What do I do?”

“You eat, drink some fucking water, and then I’ll drive you over to her place so you can beg for her to take you back.”

“What if she doesn’t want me anymore?”

“Then you learn to live with it.”