Page 122 of Twisted Love
I step towards him. ‘Then say it. Tell me you love me. Tell me everything.’
He closes his eyes. ‘I just… can’t.’
I drag in three long breaths and tell him, ‘Fuck you, Gregory.’
He’s sitting on the coffee table in the lounge staring out to the black sky when I carry my suitcase downstairs.
‘Where are you going?’ His words are devoid of emotion, of fucking humanity. I can’t stand to look at him.
‘I’m staying in a hotel tonight. I fly tomorrow. Let’s not drag this out.’
He stands now and I shudder. I’m just about keeping it together but if I feel him or smell him, I’ll crumble.
‘If I wanted to come and see you?’
‘Don’t. Spare me the let’s-be-friends and it’s-not-you-it’s-me speech. Just let me go.’
The pressure behind my eyes is building again and the lump in my throat is making it hard to breathe.I need to get out of here.I reach the door, struggling to hold it open and manoeuvre my suitcase, which makes me want to cry out in frustration. In my frenzy, I miss him come up on me. He lifts the suitcase to the hallway. He doesn’t touch me but he stands close. Too close.
‘Scarlett…’ My name rolls off his tongue in a soft, desperate whisper.But desperate for what?
There’s nothing left to say.
He exhales, long and shallow, then there’s a shift in his mood, in the air. ‘Please be safe.’
I look at him now. I fix my eyes on his. ‘All this time I’ve been hoping you were in love with me.’ I shake my head as a change settles over me. ‘You know what, Gregory? Youdon’tdeserve me. And not for whatever reason you keep telling yourself, whatever secrets you keep. You don’t deserve me because you can’t see what’s standing right in front of you.’
In the lift, I stare at the closed doors, my hand across my chest, making sure my heart is beating because at least part of me just died. Another part of Scarlett Heath, gone.
He was my constant, the anchor in my new world, the reason for everything that’s happened in the last two months. The only reason I knew I could get through it.
Now he’s gone and I don’t know who I am.
Nothing makes sense.
I’m alone and I’m terrified.
