Page 32 of Unholy Confessions (The Paper Rings Trilogy #1)

Montgomery

I miss him. Not in the ways I thought I would.

I thought I'd miss his strength beside me in crowds, the way he'd sling his arm around my neck and hold me close.

But that's not actually what's hurting more than anything.

It's the fact I can't call him, can't hear his voice, or send him a random text, much less get one in the middle of the night from him.

It's almost like he's a missing person and no one knows where to look for him.

The worst part is the silence. RJ and I have never gone more than a few hours without talking since we met three years ago.

Even during our worst fights, even when we were screaming at each other until we were hoarse, we'd still text goodnight.

Now there's just this echoing void where his voice used to be, where his laugh used to fill all the empty spaces in my chest.

I catch myself reaching for my phone a hundred times a day, muscle memory making me want to share every stupid little thing with him.

The Reel I saw on social media with the cute dog.

The way someone cut me off in traffic. Me seeing an interview with him from a couple months ago where he talked about me.

The dream I had about us last night that was so vivid I woke up reaching for him, only to find cold sheets and the devastating reality that he's not here.

He's not anywhere I can reach him.

"Earth to Montgomery," Hayden snaps his fingers at me to get my attention. "It's your turn to present where you want the next scene in the TV script."

I blink, realizing I've been staring at the conference room table for God knows how long, lost in the maze of my own grief. Everyone's looking at me with varying degrees of concern and impatience, and I feel heat creep up my neck. We've reserved the conference room in the library.

I cut my eyes over to Hayden, giving him a glare.

There have been times the past few weeks where I've been thankful for him.

He's taken me out a few times, just to get my mind off of things – dinners that stretched too late, movies where I cried in the dark and pretended it was because of the plot, long drives where we talked about everything except the one person I can't stop thinking about.

But there are others, like right now, when he doesn't seem to understand what I'm going through.

When he looks at me like I should be over this by now, like RJ's absence should be something I can just compartmentalize and move past.

"Yeah," I clear my throat, trying to pull myself together. "So if we want to stay in line with the romance, Malachi is going to have to give Erin a grand gesture."

"Oh yeah, I totally agree," Skylar squeals, her eyes bright with the kind of excitement I remember feeling once upon a time. "What are you thinking?"

Glancing at the straw paper on our table, from someone's drink they brought in, I think of RJ, and my chin begins to quiver despite my best efforts to keep it together. The memory hits me like a freight train, so sudden and vivid it steals my breath.

"Paper rings," I whisper, the words barely audible.

But I can see it so clearly. RJ's hands, those beautiful, long-fingered hands that could coax magic from a guitar, shaking as he carefully twisted a straw wrapper around my ring finger.

"He takes his straw paper and wraps it around her ring finger, promising he'll propose one day with a real ring," I continue, my voice stronger now even as my heart is crumbling.

"Oh my God," Sarah practically swoons. "I love that."

I do too, and no one knows why. No one knows that I have a jewelry box full of paper rings at home, each one carefully preserved like they're made of diamonds.

No one knows that I spent three hours last night making myself a new one, crying into a bottle of wine and missing him so desperately I thought I might die from it.

The meeting continues around me, voices fading as I spin the latest paper ring on my finger – the one I made in my kitchen at 2 AM when the silence got too loud and I needed something, anything, that connected me to him.

The paper is soft now from me twisting it nervously, worn thin in places where my anxiety has gotten the better of me.

Everyone's talking about love scenes and romantic gestures and happy endings while I'm drowning in the absence of the only love that's ever mattered.

They're discussing long term effects for a scene that's going to be a beautiful recreation of some of the most intimate moments of my life, and I have to sit here and pretend my heart isn't bleeding all over the conference room table.

"We'll need to write it believably," Skylar says, making notes. "It needs to feel authentic, spontaneous."

Authentic. The word makes me want to laugh, but I'm afraid if I start, I'll never stop.

Nothing about any of this feels authentic anymore.

I'm playing a role now, the role of the girl who's moving on, the girl who's fine, the girl who doesn't wake up every morning hoping today will be the day she hears from him.

"Montgomery has good instincts for this stuff," Hayden says, and I can hear something in his voice that makes my stomach clench. "She really understands the emotional beats."

I understand them because I'm living them. I understand them because every romantic gesture we write for these fictional characters is something I'm desperate to have again with the man who's locked away somewhere I can't reach.

"That's perfect," Sarah says. "Do you wanna write this one?" I don't know how she's not seen me being mentioned in the fucking gossip threads everywhere, but she doesn't seem to be on the internet as much as everyone else is.

My chest tightens. I'll have to write about the love I'm terrified I'll never have again, write someone else getting their happy ending while mine is locked away in a facility whose name I don't even know how to pronounce.

I'll have to take these characters through the motions of falling in love while I'm dying from the inside out.

As everyone starts packing up, discussing where we're going from here, Hayden lingers beside me. I know what's coming before he even opens his mouth. The question that's been haunting me for weeks, the one that makes me want to scream every time I hear it.

"How's RJ doing?" he asks, his voice is carefully neutral, but I can hear the edge underneath. The frustration. The jealousy, maybe.

The words slice through me like glass, ripping me open. "You know I haven't been able to talk to him yet," I choke out, my voice cracking despite my best efforts. "And I don't understand why you keep bringing it up when you know it's killing me."

Every time someone mentions his name, it's like someone's pressing on a bruise that never heals.

I wake up reaching for him, fall asleep crying for him, and spend every day in between pretending I'm not falling apart.I've worn out the videos on my phone from watching them over and over, desperate for any piece of him I can hold onto.

Hayden runs a hand through his hair, and I can see the frustration building in his shoulders, the way his jaw ticks when he's trying to control his temper. "Montgomery, it's time for you to decide what you want to do about RJ, because you can't keep stringing both of us along."

The words hit me like a physical blow. I feel the blood drain from my face, feel the world tilt sideways. "Both of us?" My voice comes out strangled, disbelieving. "Hayden, you're my friend. You know that RJ is my boyfriend."

But even as I say it, I can hear how hollow it sounds.

RJ's been gone for five weeks. He'll have one week to re-acclimate before he goes on tour.

Five weeks of radio silence, of not knowing if he's okay, if he's getting better, if he even wants me to wait for him.

Five weeks of Hayden being there to catch me when I fall apart, of dinners and movies and late-night conversations that feel too intimate for friendship.

"Am I just your friend?" He steps closer, and I can smell his cologne, can see the pain in his eyes. "Because you're hanging out more with me than you are your boyfriend, so maybe you should think about that."

The accusation hangs in the air between us, and I want to deny it, want to tell him he's wrong, but the words stick in my throat because he's not entirely wrong.

I have been leaning on him, using him as a crutch to get through the unbearable weight of missing RJ.

I've been letting him take me to dinner, letting him hold me when I cry, letting him fill the RJ-shaped void in my life because the alternative is drowning in my own grief.

"That's not..." I start, but the words die because I can't finish the sentence. I can't lie to him, and I can't lie to myself anymore.

"Isn't it?" Hayden's voice is gentle but insistent. "Montgomery, when's the last time you went a day without texting me? When's the last time you made a decision without asking my opinion first? When's the last time you didn't call me when you were upset?"

Every question is like a dagger to the chest because I know the answers.

I know that somewhere along the way, in my desperate attempt to survive RJ's absence, I've been building something with Hayden that looks suspiciously like the relationship I'm supposed to be having with someone else. It's co-dependent and it's awful.

"I miss him," I whisper, and it sounds pathetic even to my own ears. "I miss him so much I can't breathe sometimes. You don't understand – he's not just my boyfriend, he's my best friend, he's my whole world, and I don't know how to exist without him."

"I do understand," Hayden says, and his voice is softer now, sadder. "I understand because I've been watching you break apart piece by piece for weeks. I've been putting you back together every night, and I'm falling for you while you're falling apart over someone else."

The confession hits me like a bomb, and I take a step back, shaking my head. "Hayden, no. You can't – we can't –"

"Why not?" he asks, and there's desperation in his voice now. "Montgomery, he left. He chose drugs over you, chose his addiction over your relationship. When are you going to stop waiting for someone who might never come back?"

"He didn't choose anything," I snap, my voice fierce despite my tears. "He's sick, Hayden. He's getting help. That's not the same as leaving me."

"Isn't it?" He steps closer again, and I can see the pain in his eyes, the frustration of wanting someone who's completely unavailable.

"You don't even know how to pronounce the name of his rehab center.

You don't know when he's coming back, or if he's coming back.

You don't know if he even wants you to wait. "

"Of course he wants me to wait," I say, but my voice lacks conviction.

Because the truth is, I don't know. I don't know anything.

RJ could be falling in love with his therapist for all I know.

He could be realizing that his life is better without me in it, that I was just another addiction he needed to break.

"Does he?" Hayden asks gently. "Because someone who wanted you to wait would have found a way to let you know he was okay. Someone who wanted you to wait wouldn't have left you completely in the dark."

The words cut deep because there's truth in them, truth I've been trying not to face. If RJ wanted me to wait, wouldn't he have found a way to contact me? Wouldn't he have made sure I knew he was okay, that he was thinking of me?

"He's in treatment," I say weakly. "They probably don't allow contact."

"Some places do," Hayden says quietly. "Some places allow letters, or supervised phone calls. The fact that you haven't heard anything..." He trails off, letting me fill in the blanks myself.

I sink into one of the conference room chairs, feeling like my legs can't support me anymore. Everything he's saying is worming its way into my brain, planting seeds of doubt that I've been trying so hard to keep from growing.

"I love him," I whisper, and it's the only truth I'm sure of anymore.

"I know you do," Hayden says, sitting down beside me. "But Montgomery, love isn't always enough. And you can't spend your whole life waiting for someone who might not be coming back."

I look down at the paper ring on my finger, at this stupid, fragile thing that's been my lifeline for weeks. It looks so pathetic now, so childish. A grown woman wearing trash on her ring finger, clinging to promises made by a man who might not even remember making them.

"What kind of person does that make me?" I ask, my voice barely audible. "If I... if I give up on him? What kind of person gives up on the person they love when they need help the most?"

"It makes you human," Hayden says gently. "It makes you someone who deserves to be happy, someone who deserves to be with a person who can actually be present in your life."

I want to argue with him, want to defend RJ and our love and the promises we made to each other. But I'm so tired. I'm so fucking tired of hurting all the time, of missing someone so desperately it feels like dying, of putting my life on hold for someone who might never come back.

"I don't know how to let go of him," I admit, and the words feel like a betrayal.

"You don't have to let go," Hayden says. "You just have to stop letting him take you down with him."

The conference room is empty now except for us, the afternoon sun slanting through the windows. Everything feels surreal, like I'm watching this conversation happen to someone else.

"I need time," I say finally. "I need to think."

Hayden nods, standing up and gathering his things. "Take all the time you need. But Montgomery? You deserve to be happy. You deserve to be with someone who chooses you every day, not just when it's convenient."

He pauses at the door, looking back at me with an expression I can't quite read. "RJ might come back," he says quietly. "But even if he does, he's not going to be the same person who left. And you're not going to be the same person who waited."

Then he's gone, leaving me alone with my thoughts and my paper ring and the devastating possibility that everything I've been holding onto might already be gone.