It took everything I had left in me to take a damn shower and get dressed on Monday morning.
The elevator pinged, and I winced against the sound. I let my feet carry me to my office on autopilot. There were some whispers on my path and more when I reached the door, but I ignored them. My foot tapped something on the floor, and I looked down to find a bag leaning against my door. On top sat my purple NYU T-shirt.
“Fuck,” I whimpered, feeling my chest rip open again.
It hadn’t even been forty-eight hours and she’d cleaned all traces of me from her apartment. Almost like if there was nothing left of mine, she could forget all about me.
But I knew that couldn’t be true because the ghost of her haunted my home.
I still didn’t understand why she’d pushed me away, why she’d broken up with me and torn my heart apart.
“Thane?” Crystal’s voice floated into my thoughts, pulling my attention away from the bag.
I turned toward the sound, and she gasped when she saw me.
“Oh, Thane.”
“What did I do wrong?” was all I said as I swallowed back tears. I wasn’t the kind of man prone to tears. In fact, the last time I could even recall crying was in the elevator with my mom when I was five. But something about my situation with Roe made fighting them almost impossible.
It was the same feeling as then—complete helplessness and abandonment from the one I loved.
Crystal ushered me into my office away from the prying eyes and ears.
I didn’t tell Crystal everything. It somehow felt like telling on Roe because Roe was a private person, and I never wanted to hurt her in any way.
“Are you going to give up? Because you look like you have.”
I shook my head. “I had to let go, get fucked up to dull the pain.” I met Crystal’s eyes that were filled with such sympathy. “I love her so much, but I just don’t know what to do.”
“Well, you know where she is right now…”
I straightened at that. I did know exactly where she was, but what was I going to say to get her to listen? I had no game plan.
But I needed to see her.
The whole morning was a waste. I was a wreck trying to think of anything, any sound reasoning that she might listen to.
Around noon an email with her name popped into my inbox and I practically fell over myself to read it. The emotion quickly died out. It was just a leftover from when she worked with me. An inquiry that took a long time to get back to her.
Were there more emails out there she was waiting to hear back from? More information that hadn’t yet made its way back?
I was up from my chair and out the door on a path to the marketing department before I could even grasp a single idea on how I was going to spin it from “who else are you waiting to hear from” to “I love you, please come back to me.”
When I drew closer, I watched her slip into a cube and after taking a sip from a coffee cup, set it down on her desktop. She looked beautiful, even if her eyes were puffy and red.
“Roe.”
She froze at the sound of her name and looked up. Our eyes locked, and I could see my pain mirrored in her. She shook her head, her body trembling like she was stifling tears. With another shake of her head, she turned and slipped out of her cube and headed down the hall away from me.
“Roe,” I called, trying to get her to stop.
She turned on me, her hands up, but she wouldn’t meet my eyes. “No. Just go back to your office.”
“I just want to talk.”
“Well, I don’t.”
“Please,” I begged. I just needed her to stop locking me out.
“We’re done, Thane. Please, just leave me alone.”
The way she backed up, the tears welling in her eyes, told me the truth—she didn’t want to break up. She did it for some misguided fear that ran rampant through her mind, festering until it became a truth in her own head.
How was I supposed to combat that? Convince her that we should be together?
Roe was her own worst enemy when it came to her heart.
I needed help, guidance, just fucking anything to set my world right again.
I stormed into James’s office, surprised to find Lizzie there.
“Thane?” he asked, his eyes wide as he took in my appearance.
“James, Lizzie, you need to help me. What did I do wrong?” I asked as I paced in front of them. The agitation, the anger, the despair needed an outlet.
He shook his head. “I can’t help you there.”
“But you know, don’t you? Tell me!”
“Calm down.”
“I can’t! Not until I have her back. I can’t fucking stand this.” I thrust my hands into my hair. “She’s not talking to me, and I… How do I get her back? How do I get her to see I’m not going anywhere? That she can trust me?”
That she can love me.
James cleared his throat, gaining my attention.
“James,” Lizzie said, giving James a warning look.
He looked to his wife. “They’re both my friends, Lizzie, I’m not going to let the two idiots suffer.”
“Tell me,” I begged.
It was Lizzie who spoke up. “Her feelings for you scare her. She can see that you care, but she thinks you’ll get tired of playing house—”
“I didn’t—”
She held up her hand. “I know, but those are her words.” Lizzie sighed and before I could speak, she let out the hard truth I needed. “The saying is if you love something, set it free. If it comes back, it was meant to be. She set you free, so you better come back with force. Prove to her you’re not going anywhere.”
“I made a room for Kinsey,” I admitted. “A room for her to grow into, but I didn’t get to show her.”
That made Lizzie smile. “That can’t hurt. She’s scared of her feelings, scared you’ll leave her.”
“I never want to do that. But if she won’t talk to me, how do I fix this? I need her.”
They looked to each other, then back to me. “The fix is different for every relationship. It hasn’t always been rainbows and sunshine in our relationship, but we got through it. You will, too, you just have to figure out how to get through her thick skull first,” James said.
I blew out a hard breath. “She thinks I’d be better off without her, but she’s so wrong. I was better with her than I’d ever been before.”
“Tell her that,” Lizzie said. “Tell her everything.”
“She won’t let me near her. How do I get her to see me? It’s not like I can kidnap Kinsey…” I trailed off, the idea hitting me like lightning.
“No. That is an absolute no! You can’t do that,” Lizzie said, her eyes wide.
I looked between them, the answer suddenly clear. “I have to go.” I turned, not even waiting for a response, and was gone.
“Oh, shit,” I heard just before the door closed.
It was a longshot and would take careful planning and some help from Linda and convincing of Stacia, the woman who ran the daycare center.
It was a harebrained idea that could go horribly wrong, but I needed something drastic if I was going to get her to understand how much I needed her. And I definitely needed her. Always.