by Chloe Walsh
The sound of his car roaring to life filled the silence and I flinched.
The sound of tires screeching filled my ears.
And then he was gone, tearing off down the street, never looking back.
I watched him leave.
I watched him leave my life.
Why was I watching my life leave me?
This was wrong.
This was all wrong.
He was leaving.
And I was staying.
Why was I staying?
Because you love him!
Numb to the bone, I watched him leave me.
Only when his truck was out of sight did I turn around and walk back inside.
I wasn’t surprised to find Jordan standing in the hallway, waiting for me.
I'd known he would be watching.
"He's gone," I stated numbly. "Happy now?"
"You did the right thing, Hope," he replied.
I wiped my tear stained cheeks with the back of my hands before giving him my full attention.
"I want you to know some things," I said, looking into his green eyes. "I want you to know that I will never forgive you for this." I heard him suck in a ragged breath, but I didn’t care, and I didn’t stop. "I want you to know that regardless of how much time passes, or how badly you want it to happen, I will never be yours." Sniffling, I fought to reign in my raging emotions before delivering my final truth. "And most of all, I want you to know that even though I've lost count of all the ways you've hurt and lied to me, betrayed, abandoned, and broken my heart, I have never hated you. Until today."
****
Chapter Nineteen
Lucky
"You doing okay, man?" Noah asked, joining me on the front porch of his house.
I'd come straight to South Peak Road after leaving Denver.
I had no particular reason for being here, only that I didn’t want to be alone.
I didn’t trust myself right now.
I was too fucking riled up.
I didn’t have any family to welcome me home.
Screwed up or not, Noah was all I had in the world.
"You were right," I stated calmly, flicking ash off my cigarette. "Should've listened to you, man."
Noah sank down on the step beside me and placed a hand on my shoulder. "What happened?"
"Exactly what you said would happen," I replied. "She went back to him."
Without a word, Noah reached over and grabbed the pack of cigarettes on the ground between us.
"Wish I'd been wrong," he finally said before taking a drag of his smoke. Noah exhaled heavily before saying, "Some days, I still think I could be."
I wasn’t getting my hopes up again.
Not when I'd tried fucking everything to make her come with me.
And she stayed with him.
It made me mad.
It made me fucking furious.
I was here, offering her everything she wanted from him, and it wasn’t fucking good enough.
I knew I wasn’t perfect, far fucking from it, but I would do right by her.
I would try.
Could he say the same?
"Nah." I shook my head and took another drag.
She couldn’t keep doing this do me. Giving an inch then taking another goddamn strip off my heart. I was letting her, of course, giving over more and more power to a woman who would never be fully mine.
"It was done before it started." I laughed humorlessly. "And the fucked-up thing about it is that I saw this coming." Exhaling a cloud of smoke, I muttered, "All of it."
Noah didn’t respond and I was glad.
He knew it, same as I did.
It was done.
"Gotta call from G earlier," I told him.
Noah released what sounded like a pained growl. "And?"
"I've got some business to take care of in Tally."
"Tally?" Noah arched a brow. "God fucking dammit, Luck."
I shrugged. "It is what it is, man."
"When will you be back?"
"Couple of days," I muttered. "Couple of weeks. Who fucking knows, man."
"What are you gonna do about it?" he asked, voice low, attention locked on the cigarette in his hand. "You're in now, man." He turned to face me then. "With G? There ain't no coming back from that handshake, Luck."
I knew that.
Blood would have to be shed.
I had commitments to carry out.
Lives to take.
"Hope staying with that shithead doesn’t change anything for me." Shaking my head, I rolled the butt between my fingers and stared straight ahead at nothing in particular. "I can't force her to love me, man. It's not in my control." I took another drag before adding, "But I can keep her safe. And I will."
"I can't decide if you're the craziest son of bitch I've ever met or just a plain old masochist," Noah retorted dryly. "But whatever you are, I'm down." He knocked his shoulder against mine. "Always."
"Remember when we were inside?" I asked him.
"Hard to forget."
"Yeah." I nodded more to myself than him. "Well, I'm right back there, man." Taking another drag of my cigarette, I exhaled a cloud of smoke before continuing, "That woman? She's got me in chains."
"Well shit," Noah muttered gruffly.
The only way I could escape this was to leave.
I had to go.
Put space between us.
"I'll end up killing him, man," I admitted, breaking the silence that had settled over us. "And I know I shouldn’t, I know it would ruin her if anything happened to him, but that's what I'll end up doing – if I stay."
****
Jordan
Hope betrayed me.
She was unfaithful to me.
She lied to me.
And I was the bad guy?
Fuck this life.
Screw them all.
Unable to cope with the pain in my chest, I walked over to my backpack and retrieved the bottle of amber liquid hidden inside.
The need to forget was what pushed me to crack open the lid, but it was the memory of the unadulterated hatred in Hope's eyes when she looked at me that tipped me over the edge.
Emotionless, I pressed the bottle to my lips and drank.
It wasn’t enough, though.
No amount of alcohol could drown the sorrow inside of me.
"Jordan." Annabelle's voice filled my ears moments before she entered my peripheral vision. "Don’t do this," she whispered, staring at me with tear filled eyes. "Please."
I opened my mouth to say something, anything to comfort her, but nothing came out.
Because I had nothing left inside.
"Come on, Jordan," she begged, rushing towards me. "This isn’t the answer." Sinking down on the couch beside me, she placed her hand on my knee and said, "You are stronger than this."
Sighing wearily, I shook my head and tossed another mouthful down my throat. With burning eyes, I turned to look at her and said, "You need to get Ryder and go."
"Go?" She gaped at me in horror. "I'm not leaving you now."
"I'm not a good person, Annie," I bit out. "I know you think I am, but I'm really not… and I don’t want that boy growing up infected with my poison."
****
Chapter Twenty
Hope
I was a prisoner of my own heart; torn between protecting the two men that at different points in my life, I had loved with everything I had inside of me. Keeping them both alive and out of prison was my goal, but in doing so, I had lost them both.
Hunter was gone, had driven away from me without so much as a backwards glance, and I honestly couldn’t blame him for leaving. I'd pushed him too far. Promised too much. Gone back on my word too many times.
As for Jordan? He might have been in the same house as me, but he was gone, too. The boy I'd loved my whole life wasn’t inside the man he was now. He'd told me that once, but I hadn't listened. Now I wished I had.
What he did to me; forcing my hand li
ke that and using Hunter's freedom as a way to make me stay, was something I would never be able to forgive him for.
Having an affair was one the worst things I had ever done, but I couldn’t regret it, because I couldn’t regret Hunter. I just wished that I had done it all differently. Pulled out when my heart demanded me to. If I had just said no when he came back, this would be very different now. But I fucked it all up by trying to please people. I was so fucking done with that.
Never again.
"Hope," Jordan acknowledged, leaning in the doorway of our bedroom later that night. He'd been drinking all damn day and even though he was at least four feet from me, I could easily smell the whiskey wafting from him.
"Hope," he repeated.
I didn’t answer him.
I couldn’t.
I was so mad at him.
So instead, I glared at him, hoping that my look of absolute disgust could somehow portray how I was feeling. I prayed he would get the hint and leave me alone because I couldn’t imagine ever wanting to speak to him again. In fact, all I wanted him to do was go back downstairs and play happy families with his surrogate family and forget I existed. He'd been doing that so easily for the past few months that I didn’t think it would be too far of a stretch for him.
When he continued to stare at me, I shook my head and spat, "If you're sleeping in here tonight, then I'm not."
He flinched at my words and I was glad.
I wanted him to feel my pain.
Pushing off the door, he walked towards me. Immediately, I was on my feet and backing away from the bed. "I mean it," I warned him, holding up my hand to ward him off. "This marriage is over."
Wow.
The words I'd often contemplated saying aloud had come from my mouth with such force and sincerity that I had stunned myself.
I meant it.
Our marriage was over.
I was completely done.
"Because of him," Jordan whispered, sinking down on the edge of his side of the bed.
"No." I shook my head. "Because of you."
"You cheat on me and I'm the one at fault," he asked, tone resigned.
"No," I countered, not giving into whatever this was. "I'm wrong for that. It's a million percent on me," I told him, feeling the hiss of my own words. "But don’t blame Hunter for our marriage being over because it was dead in the water long before I ever met him. And that is on you."
"I never stopped loving you," he growled.
"No, you just forgot to show it," I shot back. "You just forgot I existed for eight damn years."
"Hope…" I watched as Jordan reached into the top drawer of his nightstand and withdrew an old leather photo album.
Knowing full well what was inside the contents of that book, my heart began to speed up, racing erratically. "Put it away," I warned him. "I don’t want to see."
He didn’t.
Instead, he opened the album to the first page, revealing the scratched up old photograph taped to the page. "See this," he whispered, pointing to the photograph of us as children, arms wrapped around each other's shoulders, as we held our fishing rods and smiled brightly for the picture I remembered my mother taking.
Physically drained and emotionally distraught, I sank down on the bed alongside him and stared down.
He continued to turn the pages, revealing images of our childhood, of the beautiful memories we had made together. "This is my book of you," he told me. "Of us."
"Jordan," I whispered, clenching my eyes shut, praying for the pain to stop. "Why are you doing this?"
"Because I need you to remember," he choked out.
He continued to turn the pages, twisting the knife, until landing on the final page – the page that held the killer blow.
"You were so happy that day," he said, staring down at the photograph. "Look, Hope. Remember."
And I did.
With tear filled eyes, I gazed down at the eighteen-year-old version of myself standing outside the courthouse in Boulder, eyes bright with happiness, as I clung to Jordan's side and smiled for the camera.
It felt like a lifetime ago.
Like the person smiling for the picture was a different person.
"I remember," I told him, voice shaky, hands trembling. "All of it."
Exhaling a heavy sigh, Jordan reached over and placed his hand on mine. "Thank god."
The second his hand touched mine, I yanked my arm away and sprang to my feet. "I remember what happened straight after that too," I told him, trembling. "You left me."
"Keychain –"
"You got on your bike and you left me," I continued to say. "And when you finally came back, you tossed a brown envelope in my face and told me to sign the papers... to sign away our marriage." Tears flowed freely down my cheeks as we stared at each other, locked in our own personal emotional breakdown. "You told me you never loved me, and then you turned around and walked out the door," I sobbed. "Eight years and nothing. No phone call. No email or text message. Not even a fucking letter!"
"You know why I had to leave!" he roared, his emotions taking over now, too. His eyes were bleary and glazed over from the sheer amount of alcohol he'd consumed, but his words were coming out crystal fricking clear. "You have no goddamn clue of what I was going through back then –"
"Because you didn’t tell me," I screamed. "And you're still doing that – refusing to talk about it. You never let me all the way in, Jordan, and it broke us up!"
"I'm talking now, aren’t I?" he snarled. "So, let's talk about it – about the unimaginable physical pain I went through when that bastard was ramming himself inside me – using my body as a fucking pin cushion for his dick."
My stomach heaved as pain crushed my windpipe. "Jordan –"
"Is that what you wanted me to tell you?" he demanded, jerking to his feet. "About how he made me come while my face was crushed into a fucking pillow? Or the holes I bit in my own tongue and gums to stop myself from screaming out? Knowing that screaming only turned him on. And how I wanted to die when I did?"
"I don’t know what I'm supposed to say," I sobbed, heart splintering in a million pieces, as I sank back down on the mattress.
"You're not supposed to saying anything," he roared. "You were never supposed to say anything. You're just supposed to listen."
Shaking his head, he continued to torture us both with his truth. "Or how about how he fucked my head up so badly, I didn’t know what the hell I wanted or who I wanted?"
"I can't hear this–"
"Hear it," he roared hoarsely. "Hear about the nights I rocked myself to sleep because I was so damn scared that I was broken. Do you want to know how many nights that happened, Hope?"
I shook my head, but he didn’t stop.
"Every night," he bit out.
"I'm sorry…"
"Maybe we should talk about the fact that I couldn’t take a shit for sixteen days and when the doctor gave me an enema, I was so fucking used to it that I got hard? Would telling you that have saved our relationship, or turned your stomach? Be honest, Hope!"
Burying my face in my hands, I cried and begged him to stop.
He wouldn’t.
"Look at me," he demanded. "Look at my face when I tell you there is not enough soap and bleach on this earth to rid my body of the feeling–" His voice broke and I watched as a huge shudder rolled through his body. "To this day, I can feel him inside me, Hope. In my body. Under my skin. The sensations and smell of him."
"I'm sorry," I strangled out, crying hard and ugly now. "I’m so sorry this happened to you."
"I was fourteen years old, Hope!" His voice cracked. Sinking onto the floor, he wrapped his arms around his knees. "I was fourteen... And I blamed you. I blamed all of you. With your happy fucking lives, and my father! Mine. The one person I prayed would wake up and save me." He choked out a heart wrenching sob. "Guess what, Hope? He didn’t. I wasn’t fucking saved. I was abandoned. I was left behind. I was fucking raped and pillaged and tortured until all th
at was left inside of me was absolute and total fucking hatred for the world. And for myself."
"Jord –" I moved to hold him, but he roughly shoved me away, causing me to fall on the floor with him – fall into his personal hole of hell right along with him. Pain shot up through my wrists from the abrupt impact, but I didn’t move. He didn’t mean to hurt me. I knew that.
"Do you get it yet?" he cried, tears streaming down his face. "I. Can't. Take. Your. Touch."
"I know," I sobbed, crying right along with him. "But it's all I have."
"If you leave me, I'll have nothing," he half-snarled, half-cried. "Fucking nothing."
"You mean so much to me," I choked out. "And I will love you for the rest of my life." Pulling myself onto my knees, I crawled closer to him, wishing I could put my arms around his neck and hold him. "But I can't live like this anymore…I can't do it, Jordan. No love or emotion or intimacy? It's killing me!"
"I can change," he begged, tone desperate. "I can. I will change."
Shaking my head, I slowly climbed to my feet. "No." Walking over to the bed, I sank down and released a weary sigh. "You changing won't change the way I feel about him –"
"Don’t say that!" he howled, tone almost frantic, as he sprang to his feet and moved towards me. "We can fix this, Hope. We can."
And then he was on top of me, pressing me deep into the mattress.
"See," he coaxed in a voice I didn’t recognized as he pressed kisses down my neck, the stench of whiskey on his breath suffocating. "We can fix this."
"Jordan, no," I warned, trying and failing to push him off my body. "Jordan!"
Panic began to set in, a fear unlike any other, and I shoved harder. "Get off me!"
He didn’t get off me.
And he didn’t stop.
"I love you," he whispered, ripping at the hem of my pajama bottoms. "I love you so much."
I couldn’t move.
I couldn’t feel a thing.
I was paralyzed.
Floating out of my body.
"No," I continued to whisper, shaking my head. "Please stop…"
