Casanova(68)

My heart thumped against my ribs, but I didn’t say a word. These were all the things she’d been dying to say to me since she left. Especially since she came back.

I needed to hear it.

She was my reality check.

My father was right.

Lani Montana made me a better person. I didn’t know how or why, I just knew that she did.

“I hate you so much,” she said after a few seconds of silence. She moved away from me, brushing wayward, dark strands of hair away from her face. “I hate you so fucking much, and you have no idea. I want to let go of it. I want to forgive you, but I can’t. I can’t let go or forgive or forget or any of that other bullshit people say you should do after someone’s hurt you because it ain’t that damn easy. It takes a lot to do that, and I don’t know if I have it inside me. I’m not a fucking superhero. I’m just a woman holding onto a part of her past she should let go, but I can’t. Fuck it, I can’t!”

She was broken.

I broke her.

I wanted to fix her. But what did you do when nothing you could ever do would ever fix it?

You stood. You listened.

You took all her hurt inside you, finally releasing it from her.

And you realized that one day someone would love her harder and treat her better than you ever could.

Even if it fucking broke you right back.

“Then let go,” I said quietly. “Don’t hold on to anything of me, Lani. Quit this. Leave it. I won’t hold it against you.”

“You...” She looked up, her eyelashes brushing against her skin before she dropped her gaze back again. “Just when I think I can. Just when I think I’m ready, you go on and be so very you.” Her voice was thick, her eyes once again shining with tears. “Fucking hell, Brett! The run? The school? The shelter?” She pressed her middle fingers against the corners of her eyes. “Just when I think I have a fucking handle on my emotions, you have to do it. You have to do something so completely you—the real you. And then I feel like I’m on the edge of falling right back in love with you all over again.”

She pressed her fingers so hard into her eyes it had to hurt, but it didn’t keep it inside.

The tears still escaped.

“And it makes me hate you more!” she all but screamed it at me. “Because I want to hate you, you selfish, egotistical, fucking asshole of a kind-hearted, caring, undervalued guy!”

An opinion of me had never been so adequately expressed in such accurate words.

But I was stuck. Stuck on the tears. On her truth.

“You know why it changed when you left?” I asked her, my throat dry. “Why I changed after you went?”

She dropped her hands and looked at me, but she didn’t say a word.

“Because you broke my heart too.” I clenched my fists in my pockets. “You disappeared without a word to anyone, and the people who did know wouldn’t tell me anything. I was too dumb to apparently put two and two together and come up with four.”

“You could have found me if you really wanted,” she whispered through her silent tears.

“I could have. I was so mad that I didn’t want to. For a while, I hated you. I didn’t know how you could leave me without telling me. I fucking needed you more than you knew. You were the one damn thing in my life that made sense to me, Lani. I had you. Always. Until the day I woke up and I didn’t have you anymore.”

“That’s because I deserved more than you.”

“I know that. Now. I know it now. And I hate myself. Believe me, I fucking hate myself so much, but there’s one thing you don’t understand.”

“Then tell me.”

I looked her dead in the eye and said, “You were my best friend and I loved you.”

She swallowed.

“I loved you.” I walked toward her, fully ready for her to push me away, but she didn’t. She stood, unnaturally still, until I was right in front of her. “When you left, I told myself I didn’t love you. But now? Now I look back and I know I did. Because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t feel the way I do every single fucking time I look at you. You can stand in front of me and tell me you’re on the edge, but, Lani? I’m over the edge. I don’t think I ever didn’t love you.”

She took a deep breath and dropped her chin to her chest. Her shoulders heaved and she covered her face with her hands. “It doesn’t matter!” she yelled, exploding away from me. “I left because of you. Because of your words. Because your ego was bigger than your heart. So don’t you dare stand in front of me and tell me you’ve always loved me, because you’ve already shown me once that your love is worth jack shit.”

I deserved it, but fuck if it didn’t cut through me like a blunt knife. It stung like hell. Like vinegar on an open wound.

“If that’s how you love people, I don’t want it,” she said quietly, swiping at her cheeks. “I don’t even want your friendship.”

“Maybe it was.” I put my hands back in my pockets. “But it’s not now. If I could go back and change it, I would. I’d never say it and instead I would tell you how I feel.”

“You can’t change it. You can’t take away how much you hurt me. It wasn’t something that could be brushed off as a joke. It was cruel—just cruel. It doesn’t matter how much you want to change it.” She sniffed. “Tell me something—if you knew I’d heard, would you have followed me?”