Where is this coming from? Who is this person? This isn’t the man I know. My chest feels as though it’s been hit by a meteor, my heart like it’s been impaled. Everything is cracking.
“The world, our world, is going to crumble after this.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time my world has crumbled. I think I can handle it.”
Blaze was right. The world is falling apart around us. I refuse to fall with it. I’ll hold onto the ledge until my fingertips bleed if I have to, but I will not fall.
I’ve been broken. I’ve stumbled. I know what messy looks like. And I’ve stood on top of it all.
But I’ve never had anything like this to lose before now.
“No, I don’t think that. I know exactly who you are. At least I thought I did. Blaze, what is going on?” I move to reach for him, but he backs away. If I could just touch him…
“I should have never made you think this was anything more than…” His words are sharp and brutal.
“More than what?” I glare at him. “More than what, Blaze? Say it. Tell me exactly what the fuck you think this is.”
“Nothing, okay. This is nothing. It was a mistake, and I’m sorry I let it go this far,” he says flatly, and everything about it feels final.
Nothing. He may not have promised me forever, but what we have is more than nothing. I felt it. He felt it. Hell, we’re feeling it right now. The world doesn’t shake over nothing.
My whole body trembles, and I practically hear the snap in the air when I finally break. “You’re a chickenshit, you know that?” A sob rips from my throat, but I fight back, swiping the tears from under my eyes. “You can run from me all you want to, Blaze, but guess what? I’m not her. I’m not going to chase you.”
“I don’t want you to.” When he looks at me, I see the Blaze I know. The icy-cold bite is gone from his voice, replaced by torture and anguish as if he’s given me all the fight he had in him and now he’s done.
I was wrong. I can’t handle this. It hurts too much. I don’t have the strength to hold on this time. I wade through the crowd and hurry to the door, leaving behind the din of voices and laughter. Haley is a blur of smiles and waves as I brush past her. She reaches for me, but I don’t stop. I can’t.
Blaze is still here, standing by the bar watching me leave. And I refuse to let him see me fall.
Crying is how your heart speaks when your lips can’t describe the pain. I added that quote to the journal the day I was released from foster care. As I sit in my car in the middle of a packed parking lot while the world moves on around me, I clench my fists around the steering wheel and let my tears describe my pain.
Chase Abbott found a loophole. He didn’t become a god in the corporate world by sheer luck. Finding cracks in his opponent’s armor is how he does business. A little research on the fire, a phone call to the sheriff’s department, and Dad knew exactly where to land his punches. I had him beat, though. He was on his last leg. My fatal flaw was when I went to see Levi about Adrienne. I showed my cards. I let him know how important she is to me. I know Levi has always been jealous of me, but I obviously underestimated how low my brother would stoop to knock me off my pedestal.
Hector and I promoted the shit out of re-opening The Taproom. Never in a million years did I imagine dear old Dad would catch wind of it and decide to show up. He lives in New York for fuck’s sake. God bless the power of social media.
Naturally the first thing Dad did when he walked into the brewery was bark out a bunch of threats—all of them directed toward Adrienne, all of them ending in an ultimatum. Go to New York or else. I went at him about minding his business and he fired back with, “Where do you think Levi is getting the money to sponsor not one, but two of those foster houses?”
It’s just like my father to buy his way in. He’s the devil in a three piece suit. People all over the globe sell him their souls in exchange for real estate, cars, and companies. He takes and takes until he sucks the life right out of you. Until he owns you.
Fuck the devil.
He doesn’t own me, not entirely, not for good.
“Oh, and the agreement was that the donation to Corporate Cares will be spread out evenly into monthly payments over the course of one year. So, don’t think that as soon as I write this check that you can leave. This is far from over. If you walk away from me, all it takes is one phone call and that money stops. And when Kai Sullivan wants to know why, I’ll be happy to tell him how I found out one of his counselors was caught up with a convicted drug dealer.”
“That’s a lie and you know it.”
“Do I? What I do know is he followed her to a bar. The two of you had words, probably out of jealousy, and he ended up in jail. She’ll lose her job. She has no family to run to, nowhere to go. Do you want that for her? Do you want to take another life?”
“You’re a real piece of shit.”
“Maybe that’s true, but I’m still your father, and I refuse to let you throw your life away.”
Throw my life away. The Taproom is my life—was my life—but I would give it up a thousand times over if it meant Adrienne got to stay with her boys. Hector is running the brewery until I can sell it. The patio will be complete next week, then I’m putting it on the market. I can’t go back there. All I see is her. All I feel is the pain in her eyes when I lied to her face.
Nothing.
I told her we were nothing.
She is everything. She’s in my blood, all the way to my bones. I would have to split myself open to get rid of her.
Not running after her was like not breathing—it fucking killed me. I replay the look in her eyes over and over. It haunts my dreams, even though I pray for it to stop, for the pain to stop, for the burning, aching need to say fuck it all and run back to her to just stop. Being with me would mean not being herself, and there’s no fucking way I would ever ask her to do that. Now there’s a hole in my chest, vacant and huge. Put there by the regret gnawing at me, chewing its way through my heart and eating me alive. Regret for making her believe for one second that I gave two shits where she came from.
When my father told me Adrienne grew up in foster care, my heart swelled and soared like a goddamn hot air balloon. She could’ve ended up like Micah, bitter and pissed off at the world. Not her. Not my girl.
My girl.
After the way I left things, I don’t deserve to call her that, don’t deserve to even think it, but that’s what she is. Mine. Not only did she beat the system, she climbed out of it and took it by the fucking balls.
She took me by the fucking balls. Then I destroyed her the same way I destroy everything. Now, I will tear myself apart in order to put her back together.
It’s my eighth day in New York. My eighth day forcing smiles at people I don’t know, walking past glass walls covered with Post-it notes because Dad thinks he’s being innovative by letting his employees post their thoughts everywhere. I wonder what he’d say if I posted mine. It’s my eighth day of eating pretzel-covered cheese from a kiosk for lunch because it reminds me of Hector. My eighth day of staring at my phone, then holding my finger over her name just to see if I’ll be weak enough to click on it.