I cup my mouth, sobbing into my hand as Sean joins Dominic where he waits, sparing one last look at me before they walk out of the gate, the loud clang of it slamming behind them making me flinch. I push the tears away from my eyes, unable to move and nowhere near ready to take a single step in any direction.
I stand there for endless seconds, unbelieving of what just happened before anger wins, seeping into my every pore as I turn and face Tobias.
“They told you.” My voice rattles in my throat on the verge of explosion. “They told you how they felt about me. You knew it. They told you, and you sent them away.”
“Cecelia—”
“You led me to believe they were done with me. Why? Because you were jealous? As if that’s an excuse. Jesus, Tobias!”
“You know I didn’t mean for us to happen. I stayed away for eight months before our run-in. I had no intention of laying a hand on you.”
“Until you did. The whole time they were coming back for me. They wanted me! They loved me!”
“And what kind of relationship would that be?”
“It was up to us to decide,” I shake my head incredulous. “What have you done?”
His eyes dim as he looks on at me, utterly lost.
“I was going to tell you. I was trying to figure out a way.”
“Oh, I know, you’ve been apologizing every day. I just thought it was something else, not this. Not this.”
“I was going to tell you. They weren’t supposed to fly back until next week.”
“And you telling me was going to make it all better? You’re nothing but a selfish, manipulative, fucking liar!”
“I didn’t know we were going to happen.”
“You made us happen. I’m so done with this. I’m so done with this. Please leave.” I point in the direction they went.
He charges toward me and clamps his hand on my shoulders, his eyes firing with temper. “Stop, and fucking listen to me.”
I jerk from his grip. “Get your damn hands off me. Fuck your rules. They loved me, and you knew it! You played us. All three of us. You did what you set out to do. And there’s no excuse good enough to justify what you did.” I fight his grip as he tries to pull me to him. Words catch in my throat as I freely bleed out. The looks on their faces will haunt me for the rest of my life. “If this is what happens to people who give you their love and loyalty, I’m going to have to pass.”
“Stop it.” He felt that blow to his core because I can feel our foundation crumbling beneath our feet. We never had trust, so it’s giving easily.
“I never trusted you fully, so there’s that.” I glare at him. “I don’t ever want to see you again.”
He grips my arms, his voice barely audible. “If only you meant that.”
“What did you do?” I whisper.
“I did what thieves do. I stole you!” he roars, gripping me tighter. I refuse to look at him. I can’t because I played my part in this too. My knees start to give out as the image of the two of them flash through my mind.
“Watch it, Tobias, you’re getting emotional,” I say lifelessly. “That’s bad for business.”
I can feel his pain, his devastation, but I refuse to acknowledge it.
“Just…give me a chance to talk to them.”
“Go. Talk to them. Handle your business. But say your goodbyes now, I won’t be here when you get back.”
“Don’t even fucking think about it,” he whispers so vehemently that I feel the weight of his threat, but it’s desperation that leaks from it.
“You don’t deserve them. You don’t deserve any of us. You said you would up your game. That’s what I’ve been thinking in the back of my mind this whole time. Remember? I told you that you were getting predictable, and you said you would up your game.” I shake my head. “And boy, did you deliver.”
“This was not a game. And we are not fucking business.” He grips my chin, his jaw set as his eyes flame with determination and hurt as he forces me to face him. “Twenty minutes ago, you knew all too well who you belong to, and with and you still do. Tell me I’m a fool to believe it.”
“You said we can never be.”
He presses in. “We. Fucking. Are.”
I glare up at him, my eyes overflowing. “I’ll never forgive you. They’ll never forgive you.”
“I know.” He bends to catch my gaze. “I may be the villain you fell for, but that doesn’t make me any less the villain. Stay. I’ll be back.”
I stand in the middle of my yard as he disappears into the house. A heartbeat later, I hear his Jag turn over. He speeds away as my legs give out where I stand in the yard, utterly destroyed.
It strikes me then that I’ve never known all-consuming love until this day, until him, and I’m positive, I will never know it like that again. I found my truth in love just seconds before it was ripped from me. A curse, a damning fate, to be in love with a man I was supposed to view as my rival who instead stole my heart.
And he’s just destroyed any trust I might have had for him by laying down all of his cards, and only because his hand was forced.
After hours of staring up at the clouds, I pull myself from the ground, walk upstairs, and begin to pack.
I wake up in a haze surrounded by drawers full of clothes. My French doors clang against my bedroom wall as the summer breeze drifts through. With the next wind-induced crash against the wall, it’s clear why I woke. They’re still wide open because I spent the majority of the night blaring George Michael’s “Father Figure” throughout the house and back into the woods. I’d been furiously tackling my task of packing when it popped up on one of my playlists, one of my mother’s old favorites. As I listened while ripping through my belongings, it occurred to me just how fantastically fucking fitting it was. A song so utterly symbolic of my relationship with the man who deceived me to my very core, who preyed on my weakened heart at just the right moment, claiming my weakness as his own. And for a brief time, gave me everything I felt I’ve been deprived of. Everything I’ve ever wanted. He played into every one of my romantic fantasies, declared us kindred spirits, worshiped my body, took great pains to handle my heart with the utmost care, pulled me into a living dream and kept me there until I was completely saturated with him, in him, while permeating himself into my fucking soul.
So, for the man who played me so well, I turned it up just to acknowledge his victory. I spelled it out with each lyric that I knew exactly on what level in which he deceived me.
The deepest.
I might not ever have fully trusted Tobias, but I believed enough in his lie to give him the rest of me.
But play he did. And he won with a checkmate to shame all others.
Whether it was deception or not, I may never know, but what I do know is that man now owns it wholly—in a way I can never get it back.
“I did what thieves do. I stole you!”
And oh, how he succeeded.
Leave, now, Cecelia. Now.
This time it surprises me how effortless it is to check out. I won’t fight it. In fact, I embrace it. I’m no longer capable of holding my own in these types of high stakes games. And with him, it seems I never had a chance.