Shattered Rose (Winsor Series) - By T L Gray Page 0,120

cold and harsh, matching the look in his eyes.

“No!” I yelled, feeling angry at him for the first time.

“It’s a fair question.”

“No, it’s not, and it hurts me that you would even ask me that.”

Parker just shook his head in disgust. “You have no idea,” he scoffed looking away from me again. “Did you kiss him?”

“No. I told you, it wasn’t like that,” I argued, my voice shaking now.

“Well he obviously feels comfortable kissing you, so what am I supposed to think?” he retorted, matching the volume in my voice. It was just as I feared. He had seen Jake kiss me goodbye. I had nothing I could say to that. We stood staring at each other for what felt like an eternity before Parker sat back down on my bed and put his head in his hands.

I walked over to him again and kneeled down in front of his legs, careful not to touch him this time. He looked up and his eyes were glassy. The anger seemed to be gone and all that registered was hurt and pain.

“I won’t share you,” he whispered, his eyes piercing me.

“You’re not,” I pleaded, once again trying to make him understand.

“You don’t get it, Avery. Every moment you give to him is a moment that is ripped away from us. I am the one you should turn to when you’re hurting…not him. And the idea that I only get half of you because you’ve given the other half to him makes me sick! Can’t you see that?” His voice was getting louder again as I saw the anger start to return. He paused, but didn’t take his eyes off of me. “You can’t sit on the fence, Avery. I won’t take less than all of you. I wont move forward until I know we are on the same page.”

He said what I always knew to be true and what I feared one day he would ask for. I hung my head, not knowing how to respond. I felt his hand on my chin as he tilted my head up to look at him.

“Why can’t you let him go?” he asked painfully, his voice catching when he did.

I felt the tears flow freely as I whispered back, “I don’t know.”

He let go of my chin and stood. Before I even realized what was happening, I saw him grab his keys and head for the door.

“Wait Parker, you’re not leaving are you?” I asked feeling a panic so severe it almost paralyzed me.

He opened the door to the apartment right as the pizza guy was about to knock. I saw his body go stiff and then he turned around to me, his mannerisms so cold and distant that I almost didn’t recognized him. “I guess your pizza’s here.”

Seconds later he was gone, and my body was crushed with an emptiness exceeding any I had ever felt before.

“Lord, I pray you draw her to you. I pray that she may have power to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is your love for her…”

22. TRUTH

I couldn’t seem to move from the bed as I replayed our conversation over and over in my head, reliving every word, every image and every touch. He was gone, and I had no one to blame but myself. I had once again succeeded in pushing another person away who demanded more from me than I was willing to give.

The smell of the pizza consumed the apartment, and I felt my stomach growl. I was still hungry, but knew without question that if I took even one bite I wouldn’t stop until I had purged all of it, hoping the emotion would go with it. As much as it appealed to me, I knew it wouldn’t help. This ache was impossible to comfort.

I thought back to the first time I ever decided to try throwing up and shook my head. How naive I had been. It was a regional cross country meet and we were all staying in a hotel the night before. They had a big buffet for us with lots of pastas and carbs for us to load up on. I ate what the other girls ate, but kept hearing my mom’s voice in my head telling me how bad pasta was for me. Almost out of spite, I ate more than I needed and felt uncomfortably full.

While the rest of the team was still in the lobby flirting with the boys, I snuck up to