Authors: J. L. Berg
We entered slowly and quietly. Sam met us at the door, wagging his tail and panting with excitement.
Some guard dog you are.
I looked toward the kitchen and saw nothing. We rounded the corner to the living room and found our intruder. The man rose from the couch as we entered, and his eyes immediately focused on me, narrowing as if he were sizing me up. He looked nothing like a burglar with his expensive clothes and country-club looks, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I turned to tell Mia to run, but she was frozen in place at the sight of the man invading her living room.
“Aiden?” She said it so soft, it was almost a whisper.
“Amelia,” he breathed out in relief.
I pivoted back around to her in utter confusion. “Is this your boss?” I asked, remembering the name from the bouquet of flowers she’d received.
As I watched her face morph into pure horror, I realized the truth. This was not her boss.
“Mia, who is this guy?” I asked, trying to keep myself from leaping across the room to tear him apart.
He was staring at her with a look of pure adoration and affection. There was emotional history there. My fists tightened at my sides, and I instantly saw red. I didn’t want anyone looking at her that way.
“Who am I?” he asked, his eyes brimming with anger. “I’m her fiancé. Who the hell are you?”
I felt physical pain from his words, and my hand flew up to my chest as my heart convulsed. I turned to her for some sort of sign that this was a joke, but all I saw were tears. Her silence told me everything I needed to know.
“Who am I? I’m no one,” I answered before walking out the door.
Chapter Twenty-Three
~Garrett~
Fiancé.
The word had rattled around in my brain like a runaway ping-pong ball since the night I ran out of Mia’s house almost a week ago. It was like a broken record on an endless loop, repeating over and over in my head, until I thought I might go mad from the constant repetition.
That singular word would be my first thought when I woke up with sweat dripping down my back from once again reliving the terror of losing her in my sleep. That horrible word would silently torment me as I buried myself in work, desperately trying to forget the past three months of my life. Drifting off to sleep, it would be the last thought I had along with the image of her tear-stained face following me when I’d walked out her front door.
She’d tried to call me. Hell, she’d tried to contact me by using every modern means of communication there was, but I hadn’t responded to a single one.
She hadn’t run after me that night, begging me to come back inside and swearing it wasn’t true.
No, she’d let me go and stayed with him—the fiancé.
She’d lied to me. For three months, she’d done nothing but lie to me.
Yet, my traitorous heart ached for her, and my body begged to be near her again.
I’d stormed out of her house that night and sped down the street, anger surging through every molecule in my body, and I’d just driven with no particular destination in mind. I’d driven until I found myself in the empty parking lot of the cemetery where we’d buried my father just a few weeks earlier.
I’d pulled myself out of my car and absently walked the short distance to my family’s plot where my father’s grave was now, still freshly packed with dirt and marked with a temporary nameplate. My brother-in-law, Ethan, rested nearby.
I didn’t know why I had gone there. I had just wanted to be close to my father. I’d knelt down on the soft, dewy grass next to where his body was buried, and I’d listened to the crickets chirp and frogs croak while I’d silently screamed inside.
Now, a week later, I was sitting at work, and I still felt exactly the same. My phone vibrated on the top of my desk, shaking me out of my thoughts. I leaned back in my office chair and picked it up to see another text message from Mia.
Please, Garrett. Call me. Let me explain.
I ignored it, just like I’d ignored all the others, as I shoved my phone in my desk drawer.
By eight o’clock, my back was aching from sitting in my chair too long, and my eyes were starting to cross. Pretty much everyone else in the office had already left. I shut down my computer and picked up the empty Starbucks cup from earlier. I added it to the pile that had accumulated in the trash can throughout the day.
I’d become him again—the old Garrett, the workaholic who survived on caffeine and coasted through life because he was too afraid to slow down and try to enjoy it.
Without her, I didn’t know any other way. Without her, I was nothing.
I took the long way home, taking side streets and turns I didn’t have to, just so I wouldn’t have to spend any more time than necessary in that dark, empty apartment.
I hated it there. It was too quiet. Every tiny sound, curse, or utterance seemed to be sucked into those claustrophobic white walls. My sheets still smelled like her, and as much as I needed to, I couldn’t bring myself to wash them. I’d lie in my bed, night after night, drinking in that sweet citrusy smell, torturing myself, until sleep would finally pull me into its hellish embrace.
After delaying the inevitable as much as possible, I pulled up to the curb and walked the short distance to my apartment. The sounds of my feet hitting the stairs echoed throughout the hollow space as I made my way upward. I fished out my keys and unlocked the door, pushing it open with my foot. There, sitting on my couch and flipping through channels like she was competing with someone for a speed award, was Leah.
“How the hell did you get in here?” I asked rudely.
“You gave me a key. Remember, Goober?”
“No.”
“Well, you did.”
She flicked the TV off and remained seated as I dropped my keys on the counter. I pulled out a bottle of whiskey from the top of the refrigerator and poured a decent amount of the bottle into a glass from the cabinet.
“Dinner?” she asked.
I joined her in the living room with my substantial glass of amber-colored booze. “Yep,” I answered stoically.
Her eyes swept over me in an appraising fashion, obviously taking note of the new look I was sporting.
Her eyes lingered over my disheveled hair and three days’ worth of stubble.
“You look like shit,” she finally said.
“Well, thanks. Love you, too.” I took a long sip from my glass and let the liquid slowly burn down my parched throat.
“When was the last time you ate?”
I raised my eyebrow and shook my head. “Are you my mother now, Leah?”
“Well, when you’re acting like a child, what do you expect me to do?
“I am not acting like a child!” I shouted. The force of my anger caused my drink to slosh forward, dripping down the glass and onto my hands.
Leah cocked an eyebrow and folded her arms, but she remained quiet.
“Mia and I broke up,” I said, the words feeling like gravel against my throat.
“I know, although storming out of her house without so much as a parting word isn’t much of a breakup, Garrett.”
I should have guessed as much. “Is that why you’re here? You think you can kick my ass into shape and make everything better, Leah?”
“Yes. I was the chosen one to come over and try to knock some sense into you,” she confessed.
“Look, you don’t understand—” I started to explain, but she held up a hand, quickly cutting me off.
“She told me everything, Garrett.”
“What?”
“Mia told me everything—the pregnancy, engagement, how she ran off, and the life she had before she came back.”
“You mean, the fiancé she failed to mention,” I bit out angrily. I took another swig from my glass, but all I got was ice.
Damn, that hadn’t lasted long.
“Did you ask her if she was engaged, Garrett?” Leah asked rather pointedly.
I walked back into the kitchen for a refill.
“I didn’t have to. He was standing right there, and it’s not like she ran after me when I bailed.”
I unscrewed the cap from the half-empty bottle and bent the tip toward my glass, but I was stopped. Tiny fingers wrapped around the bottle as judgmental blue eyes bored into me.
“Now, you’re starting to piss me off,” I said, pushing off the counter.
I dumped my glass into the sink where it joined several others. There were no plates, just lonely empty glasses. I guessed it had been a while since I’d eaten. Whiskey and coffee had become my new staples.
“Good. At least you’ll be feeling something other than sorry for yourself!”
I swiveled my head, the alcohol now doing its job of making everything feel loose and numb, and looked at her. “She fucking destroyed me!” I roared. “Again!”
Feeling weak, I braced myself against the counter and hung my head in defeat. I felt Leah’s warm touch as she rubbed my back.
“You need to talk to her, Garrett. Give her a chance. Please. There are so many things you don’t understand, so many things that aren’t my place to tell you. You can’t end a relationship like this, Garrett. This is your life. Don’t walk away from something based on assumptions and miscommunications. You both deserve more than this. So, please, go talk to her.”
I lost the will to fight her, so I agreed. If she thought this would fix everything, I was happy to prove her wrong.
In the morning, I’d be knocking on Mia’s door for the last time.
This time, I was saying good-bye.
~Mia~
I’d let him walk away.
I had just stood there as he stormed out the door, leaving me and my mangled heart behind.
Over the last week, I’d spent every waking minute reliving those nightmarish moments. I’d been joyously happy in those brief seconds before we stepped in my house, laughing and joking with Garrett after we’d spent a beautiful night at the river, and then everything had shattered when we found Aiden standing in my living room.
I should have known he would come for me after the endless phone calls, the flowers, and then the letters I’d refused to acknowledge. Without bothering to open them, I’d shoved them in a box that I hid in the back of my closet. Maybe if I had read them, I would have realized his intentions.
I’d been so angry with Aiden as I watched through blurry, tear-filled eyes when Garrett ran out of the house, believing I was the worst sort of person on the planet.
“Why did you say that?” I screamed.
“I don’t know, Amelia. I saw you with another man, and I panicked. I’m sorry,” Aiden answered, his brow furrowed as he slumped down on the couch.
“We are not engaged,” I hissed.
“Only because you ran out on me the night I proposed.”
Folding my arms over my chest, I huffed out in frustration, “And you figured that was a maybe?”
He flinched at my harsh words, and I regretted them at once. Aiden had never been anything less than charming, wonderful, and giving. He deserved so much more than a woman who ran out on a romantic proposal and never returned.
“I didn’t know what to think. You just disappeared.”
I hung my head in shame as more tears etched a path down my cheek. “I’m sorry, Aiden. I just…I’m sorry. I couldn’t accept.”
He nodded, leaning forward to run his long fingers through his short dusty-blond hair. His dark brown eyes met mine, and he took a ragged deep breath.
“Why, Amelia? Why? Is it because of him, the guy that was here?”
Even though my head had screamed for me to go to Garrett, I’d spent the entire evening with Aiden, talking until the sun came up. I’d needed him to understand me—the real me, the one I’d never shared with him. So, for the first time since I’d met him, I’d opened myself up and told him everything.
I’d met Aiden right after college and found him to be funny and easy to get along with. He was a few years older than me, and he’d been just starting his career in law while I had been just starting mine in accounting. He had been completely immersed in his career, and from the beginning, our relationship had been casual. He’d told me a wife and kids weren’t in the cards for him, and those were terms I could happily agree to.
After losing Garrett, I had given up on the idea of marriage. It wasn’t something I wanted with anyone else. So, when Aiden had asked me to move in with him a year later, I’d agreed, knowing it would be the furthest our relationship would ever go. I’d thought I would never be pressured for more. I would never have to share more of myself than I was willing.
Over the last year though, things had changed. Aiden’s career had settled. He had become a partner in a firm, and he no longer needed to prove himself by working to death. When he’d started looking at me differently, tenderly, I’d known we were headed for trouble. His fingers would linger on my ring finger, and I’d find him stealing glances at me when he thought I wasn’t looking.
The night he had proposed, he’d pulled out every stop. He’d rented out an entire restaurant, lit hundreds of candles, and decorated every surface with flowers. It had been every woman’s fantasy—every woman but me. To me, it had been a nightmare. The only proposal I’d ever wanted was an impromptu declaration of love on a river bank with a tiny diamond ring and a boy who had stolen my heart when I was still a child.