I pop open my glove compartment, reach for my pistol, and load it, ready to set all kinds of fucking boundaries as I kill the engine. Another rip from the joint and my head starts spinning with Amber’s confession, her final blow to my heart sending me over a cliff as she continued.
“But before you answer anything,” she chokes out, wiping her nose with the back of her hand, “you need to know that I . . . Brock . . . God, Brock, I . . . love Ryder just as much as he does me, if not . . . more. But I don’t love him any more or less than I do you. I don’t . . . think, at least.”
“What the fuck do you mean you don’t think you love him any more or less than you do me, Ber?” I shoot to standing, rage, hurt, and confusion attacking me from the inside out despite having known this was coming. Her barely answering my calls the last couple of weeks, not wanting to fuck around when we did see each other, skipping class, work, and her therapy sessions told me all I needed to know, warned me of what the future was about to upchuck in my face . . . her finally admitting to loving Ryder.
I knew it.
Knew she loved him the day I asked her if she did.
The day she lied about how she really felt about him.
I yank a glass-framed picture of her and me on the weekend that ruined my life, knowing she’s not to blame for the mess that’s become of us as I bullet it across my living room. It explodes against my fireplace, its jagged edges some kind of you deserve this, asshole sick, twisted representation of the universe’s way of slicing my heart open. Loud and destructive to everything evil, self-centered, and fucked up I’ve become since Brandon’s kidnapping, since the angel before me stepped into my life, its insidious whisper keeps asking, “Are you happy now?” It’s laughing, screaming to me, “Don’t forget. You were the architect of this structure, the almighty creator of the smoky ash it’s now burned into.”
Even so, I buck against it, my world splintering on its axis as I make a duplicate glass-framed picture of us—the first time I met her foster parents—the fireplace’s next victim. The memory crystallizes into thin air, all it meant melting into what remains of a dream—a dead dream I let slip through my fingers. “How do you not know who you love and need more?” I snarl, seething to punch something. I refrain, the fear in Amber’s eyes halting me on a needle as she stands to her feet, slowly backing away from me like a scared animal would a hunter.
Christ.
No. Never. Fucking never. I’m not that guy, that sorry fuck of an excuse of a man who takes pride in petrifying the woman who makes up the glue that holds his universe together, the essential piece to his life force.
Feeling like the ultimate dick, I step toward her, my hands tentatively coming up to cup her cheeks. She allows me to touch her dampened skin—thank God—the fear trickling over her face drying some as the anger on mine calms. “I don’t understand, baby girl.” I shake my head, unshed tears born from not grieving Brandon like I should’ve been allowed to, unseen tears created by turning my girl into something she’s not, coming as close as they ever came from dripping from my eyes as I move my hands into the silk of her hair, bringing her lips to mine. “How can you not know it’s me you love more?” I ask, my voice shaking like a certified pussy, fear that I’ve lost this gem forever cracking my words. “You’re my world, Ber, not his. I know I messed up by sharing you with him. And, fuck, baby. If I could take it back I would. But you can’t leave me like this. You just can’t. You gotta give me another chance to make things right, the way they should’ve been from the second we met.”
“I love you with all my heart, Brock. I always have, and I’m pretty sure I always will. But I’m lost, confused, broken, nearing . . . hopeless,” she says through a self-deprecating whisper, her gaze begging for forgiveness before her lips land gently on my jaw. Her expression a smorgasbord of pain, she says one final thing. One final thing that has me painfully aware that the time I’ve spent with the girl who’s served as a painkiller to my past, a ray of light to my future, is almost up, my love for her lost upon my best friend’s love for her as she pulls back. “So I know a decision needs to be made. One that’ll kill off a piece of each of us,” she continues, numbly, an emotionless flower on autopilot as she turns toward my bedroom. “One I hope to make by the end of the week.”
My bedroom door clicks shut, my heart, sanity, and fear caving into my soul, speeding my breathing, swallowing whole everything I’d had planned for us in one, slick your life’s over, dick gulp.
I yank my Hummer keys off the entryway table, and it dawns on me that I’m cool, as good as any other heartbroken motherfucker. Temporary insanity will be the key player in my defense concerning the murder of my best friend . . .
As I slip behind the wheel, I’m pretty sure I’ve got a solid game plan . . .
CHAPTER 23
Ryder
I HAVE JUST ENOUGH time to shower and slide on a pair of sweatpants when I hear a loud crack-crack-crack on my door, the sound breaking me from the temporary bliss of Amber’s confession.
The girl loves me . . .
Christ. When she told me that, I knew she was mine, knew I’d won her heart. The undeniable want in her kiss, the unhidden truth swirling in her eyes, and the unmistakable need for me in her every touch couldn’t tell me otherwise.
It’s me whom she’ll pick, me whom she’ll spend the rest of her life with.
Still, I shouldn’t get ahead of myself. Though she loves me, there’s still a good chance she’ll pick Brock, leaving me to rot away without her because of her confusion as the fucker sucks the life out of her, using her weaknesses in his favor.