by Amanda Perry
I blink at him. “Me?”
“No, the other Riley we keep hidden in the pantry,” Cassie snorts. “Yes, you!”
Deliberately ignoring Cassie’s sass, I frown at my brother. “Why are you asking me?”
“Because it’s your house, too,” Leanne answers. She sets her fork down and leans forward to give me her full attention. “You’re our girl, and we want your first, real Thanksgiving to be spent having a good time, not stressed and uncomfortable.”
My heart soars when she calls me their girl. I want to ask her if it would be weird for me to call her mom from now on but now doesn’t feel like the right time, and it may be a silly question to ask in the first place.
Cassie takes my silence as hesitation and wraps her arm around my shoulder. “Don’t be nervous, Ri. We’re fine with whatever you’re comfortable with. We just need to know what you want.”
As much as it scares me, I’d love to meet Cassie and Caleb’s parents. I’ve heard nothing but good things about both of them, and I want to put faces to the stories I’ve heard. My biggest fear, though, would be them asking about what happened with Caleb and me. I wouldn’t know what to tell them. My second biggest fear would be them hating me with a passion, and it’s likely they would after everything that has happened.
My heart races in my chest. “I’m not sure,” I admit quietly. “Can we talk about it later?”
“Of course, kiddo,” Dad eagerly agrees. He uses his fork to point to the food spread out on the table. “Eat up before it gets cold.”
“There’s nothing worse than cold veggies.” Cassie wrinkles her nose and pops a carrot into her mouth. “Unless they’re supposed to be cold, like when you eat them raw. I love raw bell peppers, but only the red ones. I’m not fond of them cooked, though.”
“I don’t think there’s anything worse than vegetables, period,” Jaxon mumbles, pushing a piece of broccoli around his plate. “Whoever looked at them and said ‘Hey, let’s eat that. I’m sure it’ll taste great,’ was an idiot. Especially shit like broccoli. I mean, it looks like a tiny tree. Why would anyone think a tiny tree was edible?”
The vegetable debate continues as I put a roasted fingerling potato onto my plate. I’ll start small and work my way to regular food if my stomach allows for it. From the corner of my eye, I find Caleb watching me intently, his frown deepening as I set my fork down and pretend to tune into the conversation. Every one of my nerves is alive with awareness that his whole focus is on me for whatever reason. Hard as I try, I can’t retain a single thing that’s said in the conversation around the table. My stomach twists painfully, my heart races faster, and I become lightheaded even while sitting at the table. The attention he gives me drains away any chance of eating anything.
I make the hasty decision to get away from him and his attention. Without warning, I scoot my chair back, stealing everyone’s attention. “I’m going to clean up, then head to bed.” It’s technically not a lie. I need to get away, and my room is the only place I can think of to go. I may lie or sit in my bed, but I won’t go to sleep anytime soon. Still, the farther from Caleb, the better for my sanity.
“You need to eat something, baby.” Caleb’s tone is worried but firm. “You’re making yourself sick.”
Something deep inside me snaps. Every emotion I’ve tried my hardest to stamp down over the last few weeks bubbles to the surface when Caleb speaks to me as if he didn’t crush my heart and break my soul in half. I find myself no longer able to hold in my thoughts, and they spew out like lava along with a rush of tears. “I wish you would give up this whole facade. You made your feelings clear, and I’ve done my best to accept them. Why can’t you accept that I can’t be friends with you? It hurts me to just be around you. I love you too much to just be your friend.”
Before he or anyone else can respond, I gather what’s left of my dignity and race out of the house. I sprint down the street, blinded by a flood of tears. I’m not running away from home or from my family, I’m not even running from Caleb. I just want to outrun the pain that’s forever settled in my heart. I haven’t acknowledged Caleb in weeks, vainly hoping it would help me move on. Speaking to him again only made things worse because even though everything I said was true, I had to fight myself to not beg him to love me again.
My feet pound against the pavement until I reach a fenced-in park about a mile from our house. It isn’t an extravagant park—it only holds two swings, a small slide, and one picnic table—but it serves its purpose for the little kids in the neighborhood when their parents don’t want to gather them up for a day at the larger park near town.
My legs won’t carry me any farther than the small park, proving how weak I’ve allowed myself to become. I gasp for air and clutch at my chest in hopes of gaining the ability to breathe normally again. I drop myself onto one of the swings and lean forward. With the sun setting the sky gives little light but luckily, a street lamp shines down on the park allowing me to see everything around me while I desperately try to regain my composure.
This whole situation is too difficult to handle. I can’t live in the same house with Caleb, see him every single day, and maintain my sanity. I understand he’s Jaxon’s best friend and Cassie’s brother, but he was supposed to be my soulmate. My forever. How am I supposed to watch them with their happily-ever-afters and live with mine just out of reach?
Movement to my left catches my attention, pulling me from my dreary, self-pitying thoughts. I whip around, fully expecting one of the men from the mall to jump out at me. It was idiotic to leave the house alone, especially at night. My mind hadn’t been in a logical place at the time, though.
Luckily, I find Caleb instead of a murderous crazy person. Then again, I might prefer the latter at this point. Caleb cautiously strides up to the swing, his hands out in front of him as if he’s worried I’ll attack him or try to run again. Unfortunately, I don’t have the energy to do either.
“Ba-er... Riley, we need to talk about this,” he insists. “We can’t just ignore it anymore.”
“You said plenty already, Caleb.” I look up to the sky, willing the tears to stop, but they don’t listen. “I don’t need a repeat of the hospital chat we had. I don’t understand why you keep pushing this friendship thing or whatever it is that has you hanging around me. What good is it doing for either of us?”
“I’m not going anywhere.” His voice hardens as he kneels on the ground beside my swing. “You can’t make me leave you.”
“You did a pretty good job of it before.” I instantly regret my words as pain flashes across his features.
I can’t bring myself to take them back though. I have never been one to lie, and I won’t start now. What I said was true. He left me before, and it didn’t seem to be a hard thing for him to do.
“I’m sorry I acted like I did.” He runs his hand down his face. “I fucked up, all right? But I will make up for it every day for the rest of our lives if I have to. I didn’t mean to hurt you like that. I wasn’t thinking rationally, and I handled everything completely wrong. Believe me, I’ve had a lot of time to think about how stupid I was, and I’ll do anything to take away the hurt I’ve caused you. Please, Riley, believe me.”
My hands angrily swipe at the tears as they continue to run down my face. “I can’t be friends with you, Caleb. It’s hard enough to be near you.” I don’t understand why he’s so desperate to be friends with me when he doesn’t even want me. Frustration and anger filter through the sadness and defeat. “You left me! You don’t want me anymore, and I get it!” I shout, standing up and pacing back and forth in front of him.
I finally gathered the nerve to tell him what I’ve been thinking for weeks, and I don’t want to stop now. I blurt out everything I’ve wanted to say to him but couldn’t find the nerve to say before now. “Believe me, I get it. I’m nothing special, you could do a million times better than me. But why won’t you just leave me be? Why do you insist on causing so much more pain by trying to be my friend or wha
tever it is that you’re doing?”
I swirl around at glare at him through my tears. “I won’t hurt Cassie again if that’s why you’re keeping such a close eye on me. Believe it or not, she is my best friend, and I didn’t mean for her to get hurt. I didn’t ask for those guys to show up, and I tried to stop them from going after her. I won’t hurt your sister, Caleb. Will you please just stop hurting me? I can’t take it anymore.” I have to quit my rant and gasp for air. My heart feels like it’s turned to glass and shattered into a thousand jagged pieces. It’s painful, and I can’t hold myself together much longer.
“Are you finished?” Caleb asks calmly, his voice quiet, before he gets to his feet. “Because I have something to say.”
Chapter 7
I don’t answer him. I merely wrap my arms around my stomach, trying to gather some sort of dignity from the crumbled pieces of myself and prepare for his final goodbye.
“You can yell at me all you want.” He remains calm and collected at first. “But I’m not going anywhere. You can kick me to the ground and spit on me, but I am not going any-fucking-where.” His voice rises with each word. My feet remain frozen in place, unable and unwilling to move farther away from him as he strides closer. “Set my ass on fire, try to drown me in water, put me in the middle of a tornado, or dig my grave, and I will still be right here. You can’t get rid of me, baby. Not now, not ever. If you would just listen to what I am trying to say to you, then you would understand.”
“I don’t understand you,” I cry out, putting my hands on his chest and pushing him with all my strength. He stumbles back a few feet, mostly in surprise I think because the push was pathetic. “You left me. You told me you couldn’t do this anymore, that you were done. Then you turned your back on me and walked out the door. You didn’t come back or talk to me. You were just gone. Now, you want to be friends with me? You want to torture me by constantly being beside me while I have to remind myself every second of every day that you don’t want anything but friendship from me? That’s not fair, Caleb. I won’t survive that. I’m barely surviving without you as it is!”
I swirl around to try to gain some composure. After a few long breaths, I run my hand through my hair and turn back to face him, I repeat myself, quieter this time, barely able to control myself. “You don’t love me anymore. You left me. You’re done with me.”
“Dammit, Riley, I never said I didn’t love you!” he shouts, putting his hands on my shoulders, giving me a firm but gentle shake. “I never once said I didn’t love you. I love you so much if fucking kills me to be away from you. I was smothering you, and I knew you’d resent me for it if I didn’t give you some room to breathe. Then the one time I tried to relax, tried to let you do your thing and have a fun day with Cassie, you end up in the fucking hospital.” His eyes shine with unshed tears. “You could have died!” He gives my shoulders a slight shake with each word.
As hard as I try to push away the hopefulness, it wiggles its way into my brain and plants a fast-growing seed. He can’t be telling the truth. He left. If I allow myself to believe him now and he’s lying, it’ll destroy me.
Caleb clenches and unclenches his jaw, desperately trying to grab ahold of his emotions. “You could have fucking died, and I would have died with you, Riley. I didn’t know how to handle that... I still don’t. I was so scared out of my mind when Jaxon felt Cassie get hurt. He said he felt her pain, then nothing at all. I panicked, I just fucking panicked.” With a sigh of frustration, he touches his forehead against mine, a few stray tears leaking from his eyes, and lowers his voice to a whisper. “I love you more than you will ever understand, and I’m never letting you go. I was an idiot. I handled my fear in the wrong way, and I will regret that for the rest of my life. I was just terrified I’d lost you, and I couldn’t even think straight.”
“Why did you leave me then? Why did you say all the things you said?” I whisper back through my tears. I can’t bring myself to break the precious contact we have by pulling away from him. If I’m reading this wrong and things go bad, I’ll spend my life regretting the moment I lowered my walls and allowed the hope to creep in, but I’m too exhausted to hold on to the fight anymore. “Why didn’t you come back? Why didn’t you tell me you loved me?”
Caleb pulls back and takes my face in his hands, wiping my tears with his thumbs. “I wasn’t allowed to, baby girl.”
I frown in confusion. “Why not?”
“Your dad said that I had to leave and not come back. He said that you told him you were afraid of me and to make sure he didn’t let me into the room or near you.” His eyes flash with hurt. I don’t understand why my father would say such a thing, but it stirs a memory in my mind. I try to focus on Caleb as he continues and not the memory forcing its way through the fogginess of my time in the hospital.
“I was out looking for you the second I knew you ran. I didn’t mean for you to run, baby, I swear. I just went to the waiting room to calm down for a second. I didn’t want you to see me so upset and scared. You were already hurting, and I didn’t want to add to it. I couldn’t think about anything but finding the sons of bitches who hurt you and Cassie and kill them. The anger I felt toward them and the fear from nearly losing you wasn’t a good combination. I needed a few minutes to get myself together so I could be there for you. Then when I came back to apologize, you were missing. I wasn’t even gone five minutes.”
“But you said—” I start to remind him of his vow of being done with me, but he stops me with a harsh shake of his head.
“No, I didn’t.” He closes his eyes and takes a shaky breath. His hands resting on either side of my face shake. “When I told you I was done, I meant I was done with leaving you untrained and defenseless. I could never forgive myself if something happened to you because I went too easy on you. I wasn’t sure what I could do to change things. To help you learn to defend yourself. But I wasn’t about to back off and let you have girl-time anymore until it happened. I may have been smothering you, but it was necessary, and I won’t apologize for it. I was terrified I would push you away by smothering you, but I couldn’t step back and let you get hurt. I never once said I was done with you. I’ll never be done with you.”
I open my mouth to ask him if he’s being honest with me, to beg him to admit everything he’s said is the truth. I need it all to be real and true, more than I’ve ever needed anything in my life. But he puts a gentle finger on my lips to stop me. “I love you, Riley. I will love you until the day I die, and nothing and no one will ever change that. I’ll never give up on us, even if you never forgive me. Though it would make things a hell of a lot easier if you did,” he jokes lightly.
“What about before?” I ask around his finger.
His brow draws together, and he drops his hand. “Before what?”
“You were so distant since we got back from Sacramento. I don’t even remember the last time you told me you loved me. It’s like you were preparing yourself to leave me.”
Caleb takes a step away from me, shoving his hands into his pockets and rocking back on his heels. “I’ll be honest with you but try not to get too upset about it.” His cheeks darken, and I blink in surprise. Did he really just blush? I’d give almost anything to read his mind.
“I’ll try,” I promise.
He clears his throat and bites at his bottom lip nervously. “First off, I didn’t get to tell you I loved you since the incident because you wouldn’t let me. The only time you let me talk to you was in your room the morning after your father let me come back into the house. I needed you to know I was sorry more than anything that day. Mostly because I thought you knew how much I loved you. I tell you all the time, baby girl, and that isn’t going to change.” Caleb blows out a long breath and tilts his head back, staring at the sky. “I’ll admit, I’d been trying to back off a bit partly because I felt like I was smothering you, like I said before, but it was also getting hard to keep my hands off you. There’s more to that, but I’d rather not go into it r
ight now. I promise I will another time, but it’s more complicated than my worry of overwhelming you.
“All I want you to understand right now is that I love you. I never stopped loving you, and I never will. You’re it for me, Riley. I never want you to doubt my feelings for you. I’ll keep saying it until you believe me and long after. I. Love. You. Riley. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. No matter what you say or do, my heart belongs to you, completely.”
“You love me?” I barely hear my words as I take a step back and ball my shaking hands into fists. Was the last month of absolute misery a result of miscommunication? Does he really still love me? My heart thunders hopefully in my chest, but doubt remains in my mind. “You aren’t just saying this because you feel guilty or obligated or something? Please, don’t do this to me if you aren’t serious. I wouldn’t survive that.”
Determination shines in his eyes as he takes a step toward me. “If you let me prove it to you, I will.” When I don’t back away from his advances, he closes the distance between us and rests his hands on my hips. I allow him to because I can’t resist him anymore. I don’t want to be away from him, even if it’s a few inches. “I love you so fucking much, baby girl. Please give me the chance to prove it to you. I’ll do anything for a chance.”
I consider his confession, and I can’t deny the truth that echoes in his words. The last of my qualms could easily be put to rest by speaking with my dad. He could confirm Caleb’s reasons for staying away from me in the hospital.
Still, I need to think hard about everything. I can’t give into him simply because I miss him. I need to be sure it’s because I truly believe him. Right now, I do, but I’ve also missed him fiercely. The only real way I can trust him at his word, though, is to give him the chance to prove it to me. Part of me wants to give him the chance because I feel like he deserves it. If he’s telling the truth—and I believe he is—then he’s never done anything to hurt me and never would. He deserves the chance to prove himself. I also believe I deserve the chance to be happy. I want to give myself that chance. It’ll be impossible not to dive back into him headfirst, but it’s worth the risk. I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t give us this chance and spent the rest of my life miserable.
