Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 87142 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 290(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87142 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 290(@300wpm)
“This isn’t how this works!” I shouted, reaching for his arm.
He shrugged me off. “It takes two to decide how a relationship works, and I decided we’re not in one anymore. You don’t want me, Zoe. You want whatever little picture it is you painted of me inside your head.”
“That’s not true! I love you!” And he was maliciously, purposely breaking my heart.
“And whose fault is that? I never asked you to!” he snapped. “And this is exactly why. Consider it a mercy that it ends here, Shannon. Before the tours and the media and my inevitable decline decide to do it for us. Besides, it will make it way less awkward on the occasions I have to come into the office if it all just stays…here.” His gaze skimmed the exposed timbers and rock walls.
“Don’t leave me,” I whispered. “Don’t do this.” Already, I felt the cracks in my soul widening, splitting apart under his reckless hands. You don’t hurt someone you love, right? That’s what he’d said. But he’d never loved me.
He’d used me, and I’d let him.
“The plane will be back tomorrow. Or whenever you’re ready to leave. Don’t hurry on my account.” He swept his gaze over me like it was the last time, like he’d need to remember. “Oh, and don’t worry about the guitars. I’ll have Ben send his new Shannon for them.” He let go of the suitcase only long enough to twist the handle on the door and open it.
New Shannon. Because I was replaceable.
“Just like that?” I challenged, throwing the words that had defined just about every stage of our relationship back at him.
“Just like that.”
“Funny how you accuse me of trying to fix you when that’s all I was to you—a fix.” Something ugly erupted from the fissures in my soul, pricking at my eyes.
He stiffened in the doorframe but didn’t turn. “Good. You’re finally learning. You might survive the industry after all. See you around, Shannon.”
He didn’t even slam the door as he left. The sound of my ruin was the soft click of the door shutting behind him and the silence that followed. He didn’t care enough to scream. To fight. To hold on.
Apathy is Death. That’s what he had inked across his stomach, and that’s what this was—his emotional apathy, my death. The months of waiting, the celibacy, the monogamy, the effort…it wasn’t affection. Wasn’t love or even attachment or devotion. It was the price he’d paid to attain his fix.
And now he’d find a new one.
17
ZOE
I dropped my bags just inside my apartment door, then stood on the little patch of linoleum that served as my entryway, staring at the space that no longer felt like home.
Or maybe I didn’t feel like me anymore.
This apartment belonged to BN Zoe. Before Nixon. I was someone else entirely after him. That’s exactly what this is, I thought as I slowly walked to my couch, falling into the soft cushions. This was a new era—after Nixon.
I’d stayed in Colorado for two days. First, because I couldn’t believe he wasn’t going to walk back in that door. Couldn’t believe he’d thrown away our entire relationship on a hypothetical question. Would he have stayed if I’d answered selfishly? Chosen to keep him for myself, wounded and hurting? That entire day, I’d done nothing but cry and stare out the window, waiting for him come back.
It hadn’t been until the next morning, when I’d woken with tear-swollen eyes, that I remembered Nixon never came back. Nixon never made the first move. Our entire relationship, first professional then personal, had been based on me chasing him. I was the one who’d tracked him down. I was the one who’d told him I wanted more. I was the one who’d risked my reputation in an industry that wasn’t known for second chances. I was the one who’d pried his secrets loose. And I was the one he’d left behind to clean up the mess, as usual.
Nixon didn’t come back. Not for me. Not for anyone. That would take a vulnerability he wasn’t willing to expose.
That second day, I’d spent doing my job. Packing the things he’d left behind and shutting up the house. Trying like hell to close the gaping wounds he’d left in my heart, only to accept it was useless. There was no suture in this world strong enough to hold me together.
I fell to my side, curling up on the couch and clutching one of the throw pillows to my chest. I wasn’t brokenhearted. I was emotionally eviscerated, bleeding out.
Tears turned my vision blurry and I let them fall, not bothering to wipe them away as the trickle became a steady stream. No risk. No reward.
I’d risked.
I’d lost.
I’d been too blind to see I’d let myself become the fix for the very addiction I’d been assigned to guard him against.