Tryst

by Marie York

  “I love you,” she squeaked.

  I rolled my eyes not because I didn’t believe her, though I had my doubts, but because she did this all the fucking time. One minute, I was the scum of the earth who didn’t treat her right no matter how hard I tried, and then the next, I was her soulmate, and she loved me.

  Love shouldn’t be so hard, though. I knew it wasn’t easy. Watching my parents’ marriage crumble into a million jagged pieces proved that, but it had to be better than this shit. Anything was better.

  I loved Tiffany, but the maintenance was too much, sucking the life right the hell out of me. I wanted something that was effortless, and not a goddamn headache.

  It was time that we both realized that what we had, love or not, was toxic and it was slowly destroying the both of us.

  “Tiff, I can’t do this anymore,” I admitted now, just as I had when I screamed at her before peeling out of her driveway.

  “You can’t breakup with me,” she said, but this time the tears were absent, her words more of a statement that a question.

  “I already did.” I reminded her of not even ten-minutes ago when I walked away from her.

  “I’ll kill myself,” she said, her words void of any emotion.

  I almost laughed. That line had gotten me so many times before. Had me running back to her and wrapping her in my arms. Telling her that was not the answer, and I would never let anything happen to her. I always believed her, believed that she loved me so much that if we weren’t together, she couldn’t bear to live on without me.

  Not this time. Now I knew the truth and I wasn’t falling into her trap again.

  “No, you won’t,” I said.

  “I swear to God, Jaxon. I will.”

  “No, you won’t.”

  “Yes, I will!” Her tone reeked of determination, but I knew it was all part of her plan to win me back. I wasn’t stupid, and I was done being played a fool. By tomorrow morning, she’d be off with her girlfriends going to get a manicure and talking about how big of an asshole I was. We both knew that and her days of playing games with my mind were over.

  “It was fun while it lasted,” I said and meant it. “But you and I both know that this is done.”

  There was no use holding on to a roller coaster that was running out of track. We had our ride, and it was time we got off.

  She sniffed into the phone. “No,” she choked out before going silent on the other end. The silence was deafening, and even though I was desperate to hang up, I felt I owed her a few more minutes. “I can’t live without you,” she finally said, her voice so quiet I nearly missed it.

  “You can, and you will,” I assured her. There was a reason she was prom queen and student body president. She was a smart girl, well-liked and there was no way a breakup would ruin her.

  In a couple weeks, she’d bounce back, and our time together would just be a blurry image in her rearview mirror.

  “No. You don’t understand,” she said, her words filling with the fake tears I knew all too well. “I can’t. I mean it, Jaxon. I’ll kill myself.”

  She just didn’t want the world to know she’d been dumped. That her perfect boyfriend, she touted about wasn’t perfect at all. That our relationship wasn’t always roses and kisses, and that sometimes, more times than not actually, it was ugly and full of crocodile tears.

  Nothing I did was ever good enough. She nitpicked my clothes, the way I held her hand and how my plan for the future wasn’t what she expected. I didn’t want to go to the same college and get married as soon as we graduated. I was eighteen for fucksakes,

  I wanted to take as many classes as I desired until I figured out exactly what it was I wanted. I didn’t need her to decide for me.

  Anger surged through me, thinking of how she waved off any discussion I tried to have about our future that didn’t include what she already had figured out in her head. Enough was enough. I was sick and tired of feeling guilty. Exhausted from our nonstop fighting and her drama. “You know what, Tiff? You’re the girl that cried wolf. You say you’re going to kill yourself all the time, so I fucking come running, and what happens when I get there? You’re watching TV and acting as if nothing ever happened.”

  “Not this time. You know I can’t live without you, baby. I love you. Please come back.”

  The sadness in her voice was breaking me down, but I refused to give in. If I did, I would just be perpetuating the cycle. It was the Merry-Go-Round of hell and I needed to jump off before I couldn’t. “No.”

  “I’m not lying this time!” she screamed like a child who wasn’t getting their way.

  My anger mixed with frustration. “Then, fucking kill yourself. I don’t care. Goodbye, Tiffany.” I hung up the phone and threw it into the passenger side floor. As the phone smacked the floor mat, a sense of calm washed over me.

  I was free. Finally.

  Two years of constantly reassuring her, and cancelling on my friends so I wouldn’t upset her, and I was finally done with it.

  I drove to Cole’s and knocked on his door. His mom answered and let me in.

  “He’s downstairs in the basement,” she said with a knowing smile. She was all too privy to my nightmare of a relationship that would have me knocking on her door at all hours of the night.

  Most parents would tell me to take a hike, but not Mrs. Spencer. She was a good woman who treated me like I was part of the family. Even made me brownies a time or two when a fight with Tiff was so bad it had left me gutted inside.

  I stepped inside and returned her smile. “Thanks, Mrs. Spencer.”

  “Everything okay?” she asked as I went to walk away.

  “I ended it,” I said.

  Her eyebrow rose slightly. “Again?”

  “This time it’s for real.”

  She patted my shoulder. “It’s for the best.”

  Hearing someone else confirm what I knew in my heart to be true felt like a major weight lifting from my shoulders. “I couldn’t agree more.”

  I ran down the stairs and jumped to the bottom. Cole looked up from the video game he was playing, his eye cocked over his glasses.

  “I’m free!” I announced, with my hands in the air.

  “For now. You’ll be back together tonight,” Cole joked.

  “No. Not this time. I told her we were done. She pulled that killing herself shit on me, but I didn’t budge. It’s for real this time.”

  Cole jumped up from the couch and gave me a high five. “I have my wingman back for the summer.”

  “Hell yeah.”

  He swatted me in the stomach. “That is, if you stay strong.”

  “I’m a fucking bull. There’s no going back.”

  I grabbed a controller, and spent the next five hours on Cole’s couch, kicking his ass at Call of Duty. I was too tired to drive home, so I crashed on his couch.

  The next morning, I awoke to my phone ringing.

  I rubbed my eyes and picked my phone up off the coffee table. Tiffany’s house number flashed on the screen, and I ignored it. I was honestly surprised she hadn’t called me sooner.

  A few seconds later, my phone blinked with a voicemail. Voicemails weren’t Tiffany’s style. She needed someone to actually yell at and argue with. Strange.

  I put the phone to my ear and listened. There was a lot of sniffling, and then, finally, she cleared her throat, except it wasn’t her voice.

  “Jaxon, it’s Mrs. Jacobs.” Sniff. Sniff. “T… Tiffany’s dead. She killed herself.”

  The phone fell from my hand, and the world, as I knew it, changed.

  Chapter 30

  Present Day

  Lyla rested her hands on my knees, knocking me out of my thoughts. I was surprised she was still there. I thought for sure she’d be locked up in the bathroom by now. After all, I basically killed my high school girlfriend. I might not have been the one to slice her wrists open, but my words meant I practically handed her the knife.

  Lyla’s eyes glistened with unshed tears. The
woman was beautiful, and I had been stringing her along for too fucking long. She needed to be free of me, and this was her out. She deserved so much better than a monster, and it was about time I stopped being selfish. It was time I did what Tiffany never did for me.

  It was time I let Lyla go.

  I stood up to head back to my room when her fingers wrapped around my arm. A familiar jolt of heat sparked inside of me at the contact. My dick and my head were obviously on different pages.

  “Jaxon… what happened to Tiffany… that wasn’t your fault. You know that, right?”

  Lyla wasn’t the first person to try to convince me, and I knew she wouldn’t be the last. Still, no matter what they believed, I knew the truth in my heart. I was a bad person. Downright fucking evil. Any other guy would have rushed to Tiffany’s side and comforted her. Told her all the things she needed to hear. Got her the help she needed. Because the last thing she needed was the guy she loved to urge her to stop crying wolf and fucking do it already.

  My eyes lingered on Lyla’s small fingers around my tense muscles. “Don’t,” I growled.

  “Don’t what?” She grabbed my face, and forced me to look at her.

  I closed my eyes, not wanting to see the pity in hers. I didn’t deserve pity. Fuck, I didn’t deserve her naked in front of me.

  “Look at me,” she said, and I blinked my eyes open. This time, I didn’t see pity at all. I saw determination and understanding. “Tiffany obviously had problems. Her death is not on your hands.”

  I ripped my face out of Lyla’s grip and ran my hands through my hair. Frustration was getting the better of me, and Lyla touching me, acting like I had no part in Tiffany’s death, was making it worse.

  She had no idea what she was talking about. She wasn’t there. She didn’t hear me spew those dreaded words as if challenging Tiffany, and not being smart enough to know, that girl never backed down from a challenge.

  Lyla reached for me again and I pulled away from her. “Don’t. Don’t try to take the guilt away from me. I deserve it.” I’d came to terms with it a long time ago, knowing the part I played and accepting my responsibility.

  As stubborn as ever, Lyla walked up behind me, and rested her head on my back, wrapping me in her arms. “No, you don’t.”

  I relished in her touch, the tender nature that she was filled with, but only for a moment, before I peeled her hands off of me. She couldn’t see beyond her own lust and see me for the monster I truly was. But just because she couldn’t see the real me, didn’t mean that’s not who I was.

  I moved away from her so she couldn’t pull me back in. “Yes, I do.”

  “But…”

  “Enough!” I yelled, and my heart wrenched when she jumped back at my tone. The wounded look in her eyes nearly gutting me. I wanted to reach out, and comfort her, tell her I was sorry, hold her just a little longer… but I couldn’t. Wouldn’t.

  I thought I was ready to move on. To put Tiffany behind me, but telling Lyla the story only brought forward the truth. No matter how hard I tried to forget about the past, about that night, that awful morning voicemail, Tiffany lying cold and pale in a casket… her mother telling me it was all my fault in front of the entire funeral. I’d never be able to escape it. It was as much a part of me as the air I breathed.

  Lyla glanced up at me, her beautiful brown eyes full of pain, and it only verified what I already knew. I couldn’t make her happy. At times, when she looked at me with that bottomless stare and that adorable smile, I thought maybe I could. Maybe I could be the man that she deserved. Then I remembered how Tiffany thought I was that man for her and I let her down. I couldn’t do that to Lyla. The thought of hurting her was a direct link to my heart, shredding it to pieces to even think it.

  Tears filled her eyes, and I had to look away.

  “Please,” she murmured. “Don’t shut me out after you finally let me in.”

  “That was a mistake,” I said, trying to convince myself as much as her. “I should never have…”

  “No! Don’t you dare. Don’t you for one second think what’s between us is anything but fate.” I shook my head, dismissing her words, but she grabbed my face, holding it in place. “There’s a reason we keep coming in and out of each other’s lives. A reason that, out of all the bars I walked into, I walked into yours.”

  “It was a coincidence. It happens all the time. There’s no such thing as fate. Nothing is predetermined because everything is based on your actions in the present.”

  Her hands fell from my face, and she threw her arms in the air. “Don’t go and get all technical with me. You’re being ridiculous. You didn’t kill Tiffany. She killed herself. And, from what you tell me about her, this is exactly what she wanted. She was a master manipulator, and even in her death she’s still controlling your every move! Don’t let her win.”

  My teeth ground together, and I stepped back, clenching my fists so I wouldn’t pick something up and throw it. “So, what you’re saying is, Tiffany sacrificed her life just so I would live one of guilt? That’s absurd. Nobody in their right mind…”

  “Don’t you get it? She wasn’t in her right mind.”

  My eyes searched the room, and I found my clothes scattered across the floor. Not that I needed them to walk out of this room, but I’d rather leave with my dignity still intact.

  “I’m sorry,” Lyla said. “I shouldn’t have said that.” She wrapped her arms around her, covering herself. Her shyness now reminded me of the girl she was back in college that I dreamed about night after night. Imagining how she would feel beneath my fingers. Wondering if she’d scream when an orgasm overtook her. I knew all those things now, and she was still just as desirable to me as she was then. Which was exactly why I needed to get away. One more second in this room, and I would fold under her touch. One whispered word against my ear, and I’d be a goner.

  I pulled my pants on, and then my shirt, refusing to look at her. Unwilling to believe anything she was saying. She was like the rest of them, trying to make me move on with my life, and let go of the guilt. But the guilt was all I had left, and it’s not like I hadn’t tried to put it to rest, I had. So many times I tried, but it was only a matter of time before it resurfaced, consuming my mind and actions, and reminding me it would always be a part of me, waiting to make its return.

  I never should have slept with her again, but my desire for her was so strong, at times it was impossible to ignore. I was an idiot to think I could put the past behind me and even more of an idiot to let Lyla live under the same roof as me.

  Seeing her day in and day out was a slow torture. When I thought she had left me that morning in the hotel room, it made things easier, put us on the same playing field. With one of us always leaving there was no way for things to ever be permanent.

  Coming back to that hotel and seeing her gone helped put things into perspective and remind me of why I stayed clear of relationships. I wasn’t cut out for the drama; I didn’t know how to handle it, didn’t know how to not hurt someone.

  Then today, she dropped that bombshell, and it changed everything. A part of me was so relieved to know that she never left me and that she wanted to be with me. The other part of me, the part that I shoved into the back of my mind and ignored, was sending up red flags, trying to warn me to keep my distance.

  I should have listened.

  “Where are you going?” Lyla asked, and I ignored the crack in her voice.

  She stood there, naked and vulnerable, and even though I knew she was only trying to help me, it didn’t matter. I couldn’t be helped.

  “Anywhere but here,” I said, then slammed her door behind me.

  Chapter 31

  I was a fool. No, I was goddamn fucking fool. What the fuck did I honestly think was going to happen when I told Lyla the truth? Did I think, all of a sudden, that some magic voodoo shit would come over me and I’d feel relief? Because all I felt was like an asshole. A stupid fucking asshole.

  Once again, I seduced her.
Got her in bed, making her think there was a chance, and I wasn’t some fucked up individual. If she didn’t hate me after the reveal of my big secret, she sure as hell did now. The slam of the door couldn’t even muffle her cries.

  I stormed down the stairs with no idea where I was going. All I knew was that I had to get out of there and as far away as possible. I passed the bar, then turned back, and grabbed the bottle of Jack.

  Money was already missing every week. Who the fuck cared if I added even more to my expenses? I sure as hell didn’t. All I cared about was drowning away the memories of the past, and of the broken look in Lyla’s eyes as I slammed the door in her face.

  My car, my pride and joy that I rescued from an old barn in Idaho, sat next to Lyla’s poor excuse for a vehicle. She even named it. Who the fuck names a car? It was stupid, but I remembered how amused I was by it. I also remembered how sad I felt for her when she admitted her car treated her better than most people. And how, in that moment, I realized we had even more in common than I originally thought.

  After my parents’ divorce, I was bounced around between the two of them. Neither one really wanted to deal with me, too caught up in trying to fuel their midlife crisis. I’d spent more time at Cole’s house than I did either of my parents’. That is, until Tiffany died, and then I disappeared for the summer.

  Cole’d been shocked as shit when I’d showed up on campus that first semester. He honestly thought he’d never see me again. I still don’t know why I showed up. College had been the last thing on my mind, but as the start date neared, I’d found myself driving in that direction.

  With the bottle of Jack in hand, I skipped the car, and started walking, not knowing where I was going. Usually, I would head to my bar, and have a drink to settle down, but with Lyla there, my home was no longer my safe haven.

  I took a swig from the bottle, taking pleasure in the burn, but no matter how much I downed, I couldn’t get rid of the memories.

  Tiffany, lying in her casket, popped into my mind. I remembered walking up to the coffin and looking down at her wrists. They had her in a long-sleeved dress, but the material couldn’t cover the truth. Everyone in the room knew that beneath the sleeve, was where her life bled out of her. But what they didn’t know, was that I was the reason until her mom announced it to the whole fucking place.