Bang.
Tangled plays on the television, and Rapunzel and Finn own her attention, but mine? Mine is on her.
It’s the only place it can be as every emotion ebbs and flows through me.
Drowning me.
Consuming me.
Happily ever afters exist only in the fictional world.
Never in mine.
All I can hear is Ryker’s incessant banging on the door at two in the morning. His pleas for me to open up so he can explain. Turning up the music in my earbuds to block him out. Lying in my bed with my pillow over my face, my tears staining the fabric, until he came to the conclusion I wasn’t home and finally left about two hours later.
Lucy’s giggles pull me back to the present as she looks up at me, her smile wide, her eyes alive, yet I feel broken. That was all I’d ever needed before—her—to fix a bad anything. And now it’s like her smile is a bandage on a gash that needs stitches.
Ryker made me feel when I’d never felt before. He made me want to feel. He made me want to want.
I should have known better.
Last night plays through my mind like snapshots of time.
Leaving the house, the Hamptons, Ryker behind. The world outside the window of my Uber a blurred mess from the tears that filled my eyes and fell like rain the entire way.
The incessant ringing of my cells. First my personal phone, then my Wicked Ways one.
He used me.
The texts that came nonstop until I blocked Ryker’s number.
He used me for his own benefit.
The banging on the door.
It’s much easier to nurse a heartbreak when you can’t hear the person trying to call you, because I don’t care what excuse he might have had—there isn’t one good enough to justify what he said and did.
If I thought sex could be messy, love is a goddamn disaster. One I was certain I never wanted to be a part of and now know for sure I don’t.
I blow out a loud breath, and Lucy shifts to look at me. “Don’t be sad that I have to go. We’ll see each other in a few days.”
Looking into her eyes and hearing her compassion for my misconstrued sadness has more tears threatening. I frame her face between my hands and kiss the tip of her nose. “You’re right, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still want to be with you or that I don’t miss you.”
“You miss my mama, don’t you?”
“I always do.”
“It’s okay,” she says, taking my hand and directing it to lie over my heart with hers atop it. “She’s still in here.”
“Always.” I fight another swell of emotion, realizing how much these past few months have changed the two of us—she has grown so much stronger, and I feel somehow weaker. She hugs me again, and I let her hold on for her as much as for myself. After pressing a kiss to the top of her head, I murmur, “I need to get your stuff. Joey will be here in a minute.”
“Do I have to?”
“I know, Lu . . . soon.” My promise feels emptier now more than ever, but I give it to her anyway as I rise from the couch to grab her stuff . . . and to give me a moment to put my happy face back on, because as much as I need her here, it’s also brutally hard to remain cheerful when all I want to do is succumb to the tears.
I’m in her room when Lucy yells, “Joey’s here!”
It’s not two seconds before I’m walking out of the room to tell her not to answer the door until I make sure when I hear the squeal of excitement.
My heart drops, because before I even see the person standing in the doorway, I know who Lucy has just let in the house. I know because the sound she made—one of joy and excitement, with a little bit of a crush mixed in—is exactly how I used to feel at the prospect of seeing Ryker.
And then I hear the deep rumble of his voice, and every part of me wants to slide to the floor and cry at the hurt and the shame and the anger I feel over letting myself be duped by this man—at letting myself love this man—but I don’t. Instead, I steel myself to see him.
I knew he’d be back.
Ryker’s not a man who can be ignored or made to wait, so I knew he’d return.
“Auntie, Auntie.” Lucy tugs