“It was wrong. Selfish.”
Brushing the hair off of her face, I tell her, “Do you know how much I love you?”
“Hmm,” she hums.
“You don’t ever have to worry about me because I’ve never wanted anyone the way I do you.”
She kisses me, and I linger in it before picking her up and taking her back to bed. I can’t help the worry that still consumes me. I wonder how she’s going to feel about everything when she wakes up. I can only hope that tonight doesn’t have a lasting impact on her because I feel like she was just starting to come out of herself. But all I can do tonight is hold on to her, hold on to my hope.
39
Waking up, I roll over to Candace but she isn’t here. The bed is empty, and when I look over to the bathroom, the door is wide open and the lights are off. She’s probably downstairs drinking her coffee.
“Candace,” I call out as I sit up, still half-asleep.
When there’s no response, I walk out of the room and see her cell phone lying on the floor at the bottom of the stairs.
What the hell?
“Candace,” I call out again as my pulse quickens, wondering where she is. I rush over to the windows only to see that her car is gone. Panic and confusion start to tear through me. What the hell happened last night? Where is she?
I throw on a pair of gym shorts and a t-shirt before getting my shoes on and then I’m out the front door and in my jeep. I rush over to her house and figure if she isn’t there then she must be at Jase’s, but when I pull up, her car is in the driveway.
Thank God.
I knock lightly, and when no one answers, I check the handle to find it’s unlocked. Worried about why she’s here and not in my bed, I go ahead and let myself in, making my way back to her room. As soon as I open her door, she’s in a frenzy, slinging the sheets from her bed across the room.
“Candace?”
She snaps around, and her face is worse than it was last night. Puffy with bloodshot eyes, and she’s crying.
“Get out,” she seethes, and my gut knots. I don’t know what’s going on, but the look in her eyes is freaking me out.
“Babe, what’s going on?” I ask as I walk towards her, but she shoots her arms out at me, not wanting me to come any closer.
“Stay away from me.”
“Baby, what happened?”
She begins to cry loudly as she backs herself against the wall, and I just want to know what the fuck happened and why she’s acting so scared of me.
“You know exactly what happened. You know exactly who I am!” she screams.
I stand there, in the middle of her room, confused as shit while my mind races to find clarity in this.
Suddenly, it hits.
She knows.
But how?
She’s freaking out, and I can’t seem to find the right words to explain myself.
“How could you?!” she screams, and I don’t know how I’m gonna calm her down. My heart is pounding, and the utter fear inside of me has me in a panic.
“Babe, let me explain.”
“Explain what?! That you’ve been lying to me this whole time? That you’ve just been using me? Why?!”
“No! It’s not like that. I didn’t know.”
“How could you not know? God, I’m so fucking stupid.”
“I didn’t know when I first met you. I didn’t know until I saw your tattoo,” I try telling her, but I see it in her eyes. She doesn’t believe me, and I don’t know what to do.
Fuck. What do I do?
“What?!”
“Babe, please let me explain.”
“Get out! Get the fuck out! I don’t ever want to see you again.”
Her words pierce through me, and I choke in a breath as she falls to the floor, wailing, but I can’t leave. My mind is racing, and I’m at a loss.
“Just leave me alone,” she cries.
“I’m not leaving,” I tell her because I don’t know how to leave her. I can’t. I’ve never seen her so mad and to have all that anger directed at me makes me terrified to walk away until I know we’re okay.
I quickly move to the floor, kneeling in front of her, but she coils herself away from me.
I’m desperate.
“I fuckin’ hate you,” she throws at me, and it kills. “You made me fall in love with you, and it was all a goddamn lie.”
“God, Candace. Please let me explain,” I beg as I reach out to touch her.
“Get out! Get the fuck out!”
My head snaps back when I hear the door slam open.
“Get the fuck out and away from her before I call the cops,” Kimber says as she stands in the doorway, but I don’t give a shit about her as I look back to my girl who is falling apart on me.
“Babe, please. I love you so fuckin’ much. Let me explain. Don’t do this.”
“I didn’t do shit, Ryan! Just go. It’s over!” She covers her face and won’t even look at me. It’s like a damn knife in my heart, and I feel like I’m drowning. I don’t want to believe her words. She’s just upset. She can’t really want this to be over.
“I’m serious. After the shit from last night, you better get the fuck away from her and leave. Now!” I hear Kimber say from behind me.
I don’t know how to fix this or what I can do. Every time I speak, I seem to only make it worse. So against everything I want to do, I stand up and walk away. It’s like I’m losing her piece by piece with every step I take, but I love her too much to hurt her, and I’m so fuckin’ mad at myself for lying to her.
Walking past Kimber, I can’t even look back to Candace who’s crumpled on the floor crying. It hurts too much to know I’m the cause of her pain. How could I do this to her? How could I have been so selfish?
“Fuuuck!” I scream, gritting it out of my lungs as I slam the door shut and walk out to my car. Getting in, I strike my palms against the steering wheel, pounding it over and over again, screaming. It hurts coming out, but I need to feel the pain because I feel like I just lost everything.
I’ve seen her cry and be upset in the past, but this . . . this is beyond just being upset. Instead of going back inside to be with her, comfort her, explain to her how stupid I am, I drive back home. I don’t want to, but I do. I don’t feel like I have a choice since I just ripped out my girlfriend’s heart because I was too much of a coward to tell her the truth.
Walking through the door, I see her phone that remains at the bottom of the stairs and begin to wonder what the hell happened while I was asleep. How did she find out? I have a thousand questions swarming inside of me, but I’m just too far gone to concentrate to try to make sense out of all of this.
I don’t know how to respond or what I should do. I figure I’ll give her space to calm down before I try talking to her again. She has to understand. She has to listen and believe me when I tell her how much I love her. I can’t lose her, but what if she doesn’t believe me?
The agony ripping through me hurts so much, and I can’t control the unrelenting tears that begin to pour out of me, taking every bit of happiness with them, until I’m nothing but numb, sitting on the couch and staring out at the rain.
Time doesn’t exist right now. Nothing does. I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting here in a stagnant melancholy when I hear a knock on my door. I hope with everything I have that she’s standing on the other side. When I walk over and open it, I barely get a glimpse of Jase before his fist barrels into the side of my face, clipping my jaw, causing me to lose my balance as I stumble back.
“I told you not to fuck around with her.”
Looking up, he steps inside and slams the door shut. I wish he would come back and bury his fist into me again. I deserve every hit. When I straighten myself up and wipe the blood from my split lip, he’s pissed and has every right.