she was peering straight into my soul. Her mouth was tipped into a smile, and I remembered the joke I’d made just before.
Her nose was slightly wrinkled, but I recalled the exact moment it’d scrunched up when I’d whispered the dirty joke into her ear a millisecond before I’d snapped it. In that moment, neither of us had been thinking about this day. The day when we’d have to face the realities of going back home.
We both had jobs to get back to. Lives that wouldn’t wait on us forever. But in that moment, that had been our life and it’d been pretty fucking good.
Quietly pulling the framed copy I’d had made for her out of my bag once I got back inside, I padded back into the bedroom and put it down on top of her suitcase. With yet another task done before it was time to leave, the weight in my stomach became heavier and heavier.
This is really fucking happening. I’m leaving. It’s over.
When I’d approached her and asked her to play along that first day in the lobby, I hadn’t thought it would hurt when the time came to go home. But it did.
I was no stranger to pain, and I’d endured my fair amount of it, but this was different. It felt like someone was taking a blowtorch to my insides and wouldn’t fucking let up when I said mercy.
I gathered my things without making a sound, efficiently wiping every trace that I’d ever been here from existence. The sofa-bed wasn’t even rolled out anymore, considering that I’d only used it the first couple of nights.
Once my duffle and my backpack were packed, I gave the bungalow a last onceover and noticed my dirty mug standing there. With a heavy heart, I walked over to the sink and rinsed it out, removing even that.
When Lindsay woke up, it’d be like I’d never even been here. That was the best I could do for her. If she didn’t want to say goodbye, I wouldn’t leave anything behind for her to say goodbye to.
Except the picture.
Because I couldn’t simply erase the whole week. I just couldn’t. I wanted her to have something tangible to remember me and the memories we’d made. That picture was the best representation of those memories I’d been able to find.
Softly letting the door click shut behind me, I walked away from her feeling like I was being flayed from the inside out by that fucking blowtorch. I breathed through the pain, but it was difficult. Much more so than it should’ve been.
I’d been shot, for God’s sake, and that hadn’t hurt as much as leaving her did. It wasn’t just the pain I had to deal with either. There was also the intense urge to chuck this fucking plan out the window, run back to the bungalow, crawl into bed with her, and then try to come up with a different plan that didn’t involve us leaving at all.
But I couldn’t.
Because I’d promised, more than once, that I’d always protect her and that I’d never let her get hurt. She hadn’t asked for anything in return when she’d put her faith in me to keep those promises, but she had told me she didn’t want to say goodbye to me today.
So this was what I had to do.
Big Mac was in the lobby when I passed through about an hour before the sun rose, lugging a crate of fresh bread across the floor. His brows lifted when he saw me. Then he broke out in a wide grin.
“Jaxon! What are you doing up so early?” He noticed my bag and studied my face, dropped the crate on a side table, and came over to grip my upper arms with the most serious expression I’d ever seen in his eyes. “Where are you going?”
“I’m leaving,” I said, my voice raspy thanks to the pain I was doing my best to keep bottled up inside. “I have to leave, man.”
“Why?” He frowned deeply. “Did something go wrong last night?”
“Nope. Just the opposite.” I knew Lindsay had told him the truth about us, and I could see the genuine concern he looked at me with. “She said she didn’t want to say goodbye. If I don’t leave now, I’ll still be there when she wakes up. Girl never sleeps in.”
I barked out a laugh, but there was no humor in it. Big Mac obviously knew I was full of shit because he crossed his arms over