Page 23

“Probably a discussion to have with your therapist. Which, sadly, isn’t a field I specialize in. Are we done now?”

“Not even fucking close.” Finally, he shoves away from the door, but he doesn’t turn and leave.

Instead, he charges my way and sends my heart into a thundering spasm.

For a single second, I wonder if he might grab me.

Kiss me. Like he used to do when we were younger, smooshing my cheeks in his hands and laying a vicious kiss on my lips.

Is that what I want?

If he tried, would I stop him?

If he touched me, would I melt into it or recoil and scream?

But long before I can rein my troubling thoughts in, he scoops up the stack of books and continues past me, his taunting scent creeping along my throat and filling my lungs as disgust becomes my newest companion.

And with it, disappointment.

Because, of course, that’s how fucked in the head I am. Even after all this time, even after everything that has happened.

“I heard you wrote a book.” He sets the stack atop the last box I brought down, turning back to study the horror so clearly spread across my face.

Not because of the kiss I considered nor the longing I’ll forever feel. But because he knows about the book.

He knows about the book!

“Heard you got an agent and everything and a big fancy deal with one of the big, fancy publishing houses. Guess that probably makes you rich, huh?”

“Rich? In publishing?” I force a mocking laugh and try to calm my racing pulse.

I try to play this subject off like my entire world doesn’t hinge on him not knowing the details of the story I labored over.

The pages that hold my tears, no matter how many times I read them.

“I’ve yet to make a cent, actually. I heard you have a fight coming up in Vegas.

” And since he insists, I match his energy and sneer.

“Guess that probably makes you rich, huh?”

“Yep.” He slides his hands into his pockets and wanders back this way. “Richer than God himself and happy as a pig in the mud about it.”

Touché.

“They’re paying me thirty million dollars just to step into the cage in a few months.

Fifty million if I win.” He stops three feet away and rolls his bottom lip between his thumb and fingers.

“Obscene amounts of money, really. Can you even imagine what we’d have done with that kinda cash back when we were younger?

” He chuckles. “I don’t need that many zeroes.

No one does. But no way I’m handing them back. ”

“You could probably support a few charities. Feed some hungry kids or whatever, if you feel like those zeroes are a burden to your bank account.”

“I do.” His eyes, that same pair that used to look at me like I hung the moon and the stars, now study me with cold, hard derision. “I didn’t forget where I came from, Alana.”

Unlike you. Those are the words he doesn’t speak, but the implication remains loud and clear.

“Once I got myself situated and a couple of wins under my belt, confident the rug wouldn’t be pulled out from underneath me and my brother, I made damn sure every kid in this town, and the next few, would always have a meal in their belly.

I won’t solve world hunger,” he drawls. “But it solves Plainview’s hunger. And a few other counties, too.”

“Oh… well…” It’s okay, Alana. Admit you’re a piece of shit who never looked outside your own echo chamber of self-pity.

Doing better starts with self-awareness.

“Why’d you leave, Alana?”

I swallow and firm my lips into straight lines. I give him silence because there’s nothing else I can offer that won’t make everything worse.

“ Something happened.” Snarling, he leans closer.

“Someone said something, or someone did something. Or maybe I hurt your feelings. Or Chris and me, as a package deal, became too much. Or maybe your mother said some shit. Or you and that dude found each other on a fucking chat site, and things got out of hand. What, Alana?” He whips his hand forward so fast, the muscle memory I once possessed, now pathetically out of practice, can’t save me from the way he wraps his hand around the side of my neck and controls my face with his thumb beneath my jaw.

He forces me to meet his eyes, refusing me any other choice. “What happened that led you to dip out of my life so fucking violently, it’s like you died?”

My knees tremble. My pulse sprints. My entire body, heart and soul, spins out of control as tears slide onto my cheeks and, horrifyingly, my hand comes up.

Not to shove him away. But to wrap around his tense wrist.

“Why, Alana?” His voice shakes with desperation. “Why did you do that to us?”

“Please leave me alone.” My chest and shoulders bounce with a silent sob.

My vision turns blurry, tears blinding me to everything but the hulking shape of a man begging for something he is, in a fair world, entitled to.

But this isn’t a fair world, despite the signage he had installed above his gym. “Please just go, Tommy.”

“You could save us both by sharing the things you know.” He shakes me.

“You ruined both of our lives, Alana. By making choices that, for whatever reason, suited only you, you changed everything.” His eyes glitter with pain.

With unshed tears. “You destroyed us, and you don’t even have the guts to own up to it.

Jesus, why is my request so fucking outlandish that you won’t say what was going through your head back then? ”

“Because it’s my burden to carry!” Finally, I find a pocket of strength and take a step back, pushing his hand away when he’d rather follow and grab me again.

“You’re entitled to your feelings, Tommy.

You want to hate me for ruining a teenage romance?

Then do it. Hate me. That’s fine. Because I’ve spent my whole life hating me, too. ”

“A teenage romance?” he growls. “You call that a fucking teenage romance?”

“We were teens.” I broaden my shoulders and take another step back. “You romanticize memories held within a child’s mind.”

“You’re a fuckin’ liar!” He charges forward, pointing a dangerous finger in my face.

“You look right into my eyes and spout that shit off like you think I haven’t been calling you out on bullshit since the moment we met.

We were not stupid kids, Alana, and I’m not a stupid man.

We were never children, and what we had was not some fleeting bullshit.

You ruined the greatest thing either of us will ever know.

And maybe you have to lie to yourself to remain sane.

Maybe that’s how you get through. But I remember what we were.

We had that once-in-a-lifetime love, the kind most never even find.

I was poor and hungry and dirty, but I was rich with us . ”

“You’re wrong.” On this one point, at least, I don’t waver.

I won’t. Even if the price I paid was cruel.

“ We were not the best thing that ever happened to me, Tommy. No matter how many times you scream it in my face, and no matter how good it felt back then, no matter how much it hurts now. We were not where everything starts and ends. My son is. He always will be. And there isn’t a damn thing you can say that’ll make me question that.

I’m sorry I hurt your feelings when I left, but the past is the past, and there’s nothing we can do about it now.

” The music cuts out once more, and my phone trills with an incoming call.

So I stride to the counter and grab it, both thankful for the interruption and dreading the idea that something may be wrong at home.

Instead, I find Colin’s name on my screen, another brutal twist of the universe’s blade.

It’s not enough that we hurt. That cold bitch, destiny, wants us to suffer, too.

Taking a long, shuddering breath and dropping my head back, I stare up at the ceiling and accept the call before I lose my nerve. I force a plastic-y, inauthentic cheeriness to my tone. “Hi, Colin.”

Tommy’s rage burns hotter. His pain, like palpable waves pulsing in the air.

“I was planning to call you in a little while,” I rasp, knuckling a tear from my cheek. “It’s like you read my mind.”

“Fuck this.” Tommy stalks toward the shop door and tears it open, the bell above screaming and the hinges on the side protesting their abuse. Then he barges through without a backward glance, slamming it again in his wake.

Small mercies, I suppose.

At least I get to be alone.

“You okay?” Colin’s concern rolls through the line just as warmly as the hug he gave me the day we married. The way he cares, like nothing else I’d ever known in my life. God, he’s entirely too decent to be mixed up in my messy life. “Was that Tommy?”

I lower my gaze and swallow the tears balling in my throat, and circling the desk, I yank a few more tissues from the box beneath. “Yeah. That was him.”

“He sounded pissed. Did you tell him?”

“No.” I blow my nose, knowing the sound must be awful from Colin’s side of the line. But he’s seen me at my worst. He’s watched over me when I could do nothing more than lie on the bathroom floor and cry myself to sleep. “He’s always pissed. That’s not something new.”

“Are you…” He pauses for a beat, considering his words. “Are you safe, Alana?”

My heart?

No.

My soul and sanity?

Absolutely not.

“Physically?” I blow my nose a second time and wipe above my lip. If I ignore the way they tremble, then I don’t have to admit how being mere feet from Tommy Watkins destroys me. “Yeah. I’m fine. How are things in New York?”