Wright with Benefits (Wright Series #8) - K.A. Linde Page 0,77
he demanded, pointing at the barn. “Chase had that coming to him.”
“And me?” I shouted back at him. “Did I have that coming, too?”
Jordan looked away from me. “You said from the beginning that we were temporary.”
I choked back a gasp. “And you don’t think that’s changed?” I asked, my voice strangled. “What about Seattle?”
“Seattle was a pipe dream!” he yelled.
I shrank back. “I thought it was real.”
“Fuck, Annie. Day one, you said you were leaving, and I wanted to keep you, so I said I’d go. What else could I say?”
“You could have talked to me!” I insisted.
“And said what?” He laughed derisively. “You wanted Seattle. I wanted you. And now my mom has cancer. I can’t leave Lubbock, Annie, and I can’t keep you from following your dream.”
“What if I just want you?”
Jordan shook his head. “No, that’s not what you want. You’d regret it, and I’d never let you do it. If you want to get out of here, you’ll go. We both knew from the start that you were leaving with or without me, and you still are.”
Silence stretched between us.
Well, there it was.
I’d started this. I’d made us friends with benefits and told him to expect nothing more. Should I be surprised that he didn’t see that I was in love with him? That I would have…had given up everything to stay here with him? This might have been grief talking, but it still hurt. It still hurt like he’d cut me open, looked at my insides, and somehow missed all the important parts.
“That’s what you think of me?” I asked hoarsely.
“It’s not what I think of you, Annie. It’s just how it is. You and I were fun while it lasted, but you were the one who drew the line in the sand. You were the one who put a time limit on our affections. I’m just the one walking away so that you can follow your dreams.”
I choked. He thought he was being selfless. He thought that by ghosting me and then breaking up with me, he was being kind. How dare he! How fucking dare he!
“You don’t get to make that choice for me,” I snarled as I wrestled the claddagh ring off of my finger. “You don’t get to be an ass and think that you’re doing the right thing in all of this. It isn’t fair. I’m a whole person who can think and breathe and make my own goddamn choices.”
I’d gotten attached to the ring, but I didn’t want his version of my ring.
I flung the ring at him. It thudded softly against his chest. He furrowed his brows as if he didn’t realize what I’d done, his hand landing on his chest where the ring had hit.
“And for your information, I already put in my rank choices for residency programs.” I glared at him, trying to keep the tears at bay long enough to escape him before he could see me breaking. “I knew the minute that we found out about your mother’s cancer diagnosis that you couldn’t leave her, and I would never ask you. So I chose to stay in Lubbock and changed my rank choice to Tech.”
Jordan’s eyes rounded and he opened his mouth, a small startled noise escaping him.
“You’d know that if you had talked to me at all in the last fucking week.”
“Annie…”
“Save it,” I snapped. “If this is what you think of me and…what you think of us…” I choked back on my tears and shook my head. I couldn’t finish. “Good-bye Jordan.”
Then, I turned on my heel and walked away.
Grief was an excuse for his behavior up to a point, but it wasn’t enough to make up for how much he was hurting me. He could have talked to me. We could have worked through it together. Instead, he’d assumed that I’d leave him rather than staying here.
Part of that was on me. I had drawn the line in the sand and put a time limit on our love. But I’d thought that things were different since Seattle. I thought he knew what he meant to me. We’d just been on a different chapters of the same book. I’d seen the happily ever after waiting at the end of the tunnel and he’d only seen the inevitable destruction. Then he’d gone and destroyed it all himself.
“Annie,” Sutton said, dashing to my side.
“How much did you hear?”
She bit her lip. “Everything.” She took my hand. “I didn’t think this would happen.”