The Love Series Complete Box Set (90 page)

When he pulls away from the kiss, he traces his knuckles lightly across my face. The action makes my eyes flutter open, and what I see before me is amazingly breathtaking. Bryan’s warm eyes are wide and sincere. The soft crinkle in the corners that’s always there seems softer now as his lips pull up gently at the corners.

He pulls both of my hands into his and brings them up to his lips. Returning our laced-together fingers to my lap, Bryan gazes at me one last time as the words, “I love you” tumble freely from his mouth.

Involuntarily, I gasp. My eyes widen and my heart speeds up. Pulling one of my hands from his, I cover my mouth. Not knowing what I have to tell him, Bryan must confuse my reaction for excitement because he laughs at what he must perceive as crazy girl antics.

Without letting me say anything, he covers my mouth with his once again. He starts speaking against my lips, through our kiss. “I’ve never said it to anyone before, but I do. Melanie, I love you and I’m so sorry that I’ve been a crappy boyfriend lately.”

With wide eyes and trembling hands, I inhale a shuddery breath and try to find the words that I know I need to say. But instead of words coming out of my mouth, tears stream down my face and my throat constricts.

“Shh, baby. Don’t cry,” he coos into my ear as he pulls me to his chest. Dancing lightly through the tangled mass of my wet hair, Bryan’s fingers calm me a little.

“I’m so sorry, Bryan. I’m so sorry,” I say I’m sorry over and over again, but he doesn’t know what I’m sorry for.

Yet.

Looking at me once again, his eyes still soft and warm, he calmly says, “It’s okay. You don’t have to say it back. Just know that I love you.” He kisses his lips gently to my temple and I lose it.

Wrapping my frail arms tightly around his waist, I tell him the words I wanted to tell him so long ago. “Bryan, I love you too, so much,” I whisper the words a few more times into his heather-grey T-shirt before pulling completely away from him. My body chills again without his warmth pressed up against me.

I wipe at the tears streaking my face and take a deep breath. Straightening my spine and squaring my shoulders, I swallow my guilt and let the words fall.

“I love you too. And no, I’m not just saying it because you said it. I do love you, but I have to tell you something else, and I know that after I tell you, you won’t love me anymore.” He gives me a “don’t be crazy” look and moves to speak, but I cut him off.

“I slept with someone else.”

I wish I could say that I feel lighter for finally having said those words, but I can’t. All I feel now is crushing pressure as my heart begins to implode.

Bryan recoils from me and shoots up from the couch. There isn’t much space in the small room, but he’s frantically pacing the small patch of carpeting that’s there. I can’t imagine what’s racing through his head. Hell, with everything going on with his dad cheating, I
don’t
want to imagine it.

I notice that his hands start to shake so I stand up next to him and try to hold them to calm him. Not surprisingly, he doesn’t let me touch him. Instead, he folds his arms across his chest and stands stoically in front of me. He scrubs his hand gruffly across his face and growls out a loud “fuck” which reverberates through the small living room.

I can feel his anger pulsating off him. The tension is so palpable that I just don’t know what to say. Nothing matters now, anyway.

Roughly, he stuffs his hands into his pockets and stares at me harshly. “With who?” he grits out.

“I don’t know.” A mouse squeaks more loudly than I just spoke.

Seething now, he steps in front of me. “What did you just say?”

“I said, I don’t know.” My eyes are staring at the old, stained carpet—that sight more pleasant than the anguished filled look I’d surely see on Bryan’s face.

“You don’t fucking know? What the hell kind of answer is that? Tell me everything, Melanie.” He yells and it forces more tears to spill past my lids. Still unable to speak, he yells at me again. “Fucking tell me!”

I fall back on the couch at the anger in his words. I hate myself for putting them there, for erasing the beauty that is usually etched onto his face.

Through my sobs, sobs to which I have no right, I choke out, “It was over Christmas break. I’m so sorry, Bryan. Please, I love you. I’m so sorry.”

More pacing and more sobs. An awkward, painful silence. Our hearts are being torn in half, with the hope of ever being repaired off in the vast unsure distance before us.

After a few minutes, my tears stop enough for me to see that his anger has morphed somewhat into sadness. Bryan flops onto the couch and huffs a loud sigh.

I look over at him—his shoulders sag and his face sinks with pain. With his eyes searching the ceiling for some kind of escape, he whispers, “Why?”

His elbows fall to his knees and his head drops into his hands as he whispers “why” over and over again.

“I . . . I . . . don’t know. I’m sorry.” I stumble over my words unable to find any that will help to explain my motives.

“No!” he barks. “Tell me, now. Why? Was I not good enough?” The hurt that tramples across his face makes me cave and tell him everything.

“It was because of the text. And then you weren’t calling me. I wanted to come visit you, but you told me not to. I thought you had moved on.” I let the words race out of my mouth and hope to God that they make sense.

Huffing, he stares at me confusedly. “What text?”

“Courtney sent me a picture of you two kissing and I just figured you got back with her. And then you told me not to visit you and you were so distant . . . I just thought . . . well, I just thought you were done with me. “

“Done with you?” he seethes quietly, but his flippant sarcasm shines through. “I thought I’d never be
done
with you,” he adds sadly.

A beat later, his anger returns as he recalls the rest of my words. “Why the fuck would I get back with her? Especially after everything I told you about her! Hell, even if she wasn’t a stuck-up bitch, the fact that I have told you over and over again that I don’t want her . . . that I want you. I don’t fucking understand why you never believe me.”

“I don’t either, Bryan. I hate that part of me . . . that part that questions everything. That can only see me as worthless. I . . .” Crying sounds emerge as my words trail off.

“You are not worthless,” he says as he sits back down next to me. His words are a little softer than they were a few minutes ago, but he’s still distant and cold. “And I told you not to visit because my parents were splitting up. None of that had
anything
to do with you and me.”

“I know. I know. I wish I knew that then, but I know it now. Please believe me that I’m so sorry. I would do anything to take it back, but I can’t.”

“This isn’t just about the cheating, Melanie.” His words shock me to silence.

“What do you mean?” I manage to croak.

“You don’t trust me, Melanie. You never have, but what’s even more difficult to get past is that you don’t trust us. You don’t trust that what we have is enough for me. My God, it was enough. But no matter how many times I told you that, you never believed me.”

“No . . . I do believe in us. Please, Bryan. Give me a chance to prove it to you. Please, please, please.” I reach for his hand again and when he pulls away from me it’s like I’ve been punched in the gut.

“I can’t, Melanie. I can’t move past this.” He turns his face away from mine, but I grab his stubbled jaw and pull it back to me.

“Please. I’ll do anything. Please don’t leave me. Bryan, believe me. I’m sorry.” I’ve never been sorrier for anything in my entire life.

Bryan reaches up and pulls my hand from his face. When he looks in my eyes, I can see tears shimmering in his, just beneath the anger and pain that hover at the surface. “I can’t, Melanie. I need to be with a girl who loves herself as much as I do. I deserve to be with a girl who is secure enough with who she is that she doesn’t need my constant reassurances.” His hands clench into fists and his knuckles turn white under the pressure. “I can’t be with someone who doesn’t have enough faith in
us
and in
herself
to get through a rough patch. I’m sorry, Melanie, but I just can’t.”

And on his last words, he stands from the couch and picks my jacket up from the chair that he tossed it on when I walked in over an hour ago. As I turn to step into it, I realize that his small dining room table is romantically set for two. The take-out menu for Bella’s restaurant is out next to the phone and there are unlit candles everywhere. Bryan tracks my stare and shrugs his shoulders and mumbles, “I was going to surprise you with an early Valentine’s Day dinner.”

Any last hope I had of leaving here without being completely and utterly broken, have now been annihilated.

I reach for the knob and feel an icy blast slap me in the face as I open the door. I hear the jangle of Bryan’s car keys, but the thought of being next to him as he drives me home is more than I can bear.

I reach for the hand in which he’s holding his keys and stare up into his eyes. “No. I’ll walk.” He nods and drops his keys onto the small side table.

Stepping over the threshold, I look at him one last time as the words, “I’m sorry” get stuck in my throat.

Bryan looks at me with pain in his eyes as he says, “Goodbye, Melanie.”

I do nothing but stare numbly as he closes the door on me. My heart splinters into a million tiny fragments when I hear the lock click. He’s gone from my life forever and I know that I’ve been irrevocably changed by what just happened.

They say that when one door closes, another one opens, but I think they’re lying.

Chapter 11

April 2013

“Melanie! Wake up, girl. You’re going to miss your midterm. Come on.” Peyton’s not-so-gentle wake-up call includes yelling in my ear and shaking me somewhat violently. “Let’s go, Melanie. If you don’t get your ass out of bed right now, I’m going to get the ice water . . . again.”

I lamely roll to my side and face her. Glaring at her from under my forearm,which is draped across my face, I give her the side-eye. “You wouldn’t.”

Her face lights up playfully. “Oh, but I would. Let’s go.”

Instead of getting out of bed, I roll back over and face the wall. Grumbling incoherent nonsense at Peyton’s craziness, I don’t even hear her leave the room.

But when the freezing cold water comes splashing down on me, I know that she’s returned. “What the freak! I can’t believe you just did that!” I screech as I jump out of my now drenched bed.

“Well, I did.” She stands with her hands on her hips sticking her tongue out at me. “I’ve had enough of this moping around and not-doing-shit business. You haven’t done much of anything these last six weeks and I can pretty much guarantee you that if
I
didn’t wake
you
up, you’d be missing another midterm.” She rolls her eyes at me as I stand before her wringing out my soaked pajama shirt.

“Fine. I’m up. Are you happy now?” I snap sarcastically.

“Thrilled, actually. Now get your ass out of here in the next ten minutes and I’ll be ecstatic,” she bites back as she starts tapping the face of her watch. When she stalks out of the room and closes the door behind her, I flip her off.

As I get ready for my last midterm before spring break, I think back over the last six weeks and realize that Peyton is not entirely wrong. I have been in a funk. Well, actually to call it a funk is quite an understatement. My grades have slipped. My attitude sucks. I’m angry most of the time, and when I’m not angry, I’m depressed. The real kicker is that the only person to be blamed for all of this is me.

Bryan’s words about not being able to love myself and of not having enough faith in who I am as a person repeat on a continuous loop in my head. And, in these last six weeks, I have replayed the last eighteen years of my life through the lens of those words.

Did I not have many friends in middle school because the kids were mean? Or was it because I was just too insecure to meet new people? Was the reason I didn’t date in high school because no one was interested? Or was it because I would never let anyone close enough because I was so afraid to show them the real me? Is my complete inability to receive a compliment a result of me not feeling that way about myself in the first place?

I’ve been so open and loving to all of the important people in my life—my mom, Maddy and even Reid in a weird brother-sister kind of way. I’m always there whenever anyone else needs me, but it’s possible that I’ve left out one very important person—me.

Why can’t I love myself the way I love my friends and family? Why can’t I see myself the way that they see me?

Why can’t I see me the way Bryan saw me?

Lost in my world of what-ifs, I don’t realize that my ten minutes to get ready is coming to a close. When Peyton starts banging on the door, I call out, “Okay. Okay. I’m coming.”

I grab my bag and head out the door telling Peyton that I’ll be back around noon. She’s driving me home today for spring break. Since Elmira is on her way, she offered to bring me home. I didn’t want my mom to have to deal with the inconvenience, so I took Peyton up on her generosity.