Crave Me (The Good Ol' Boys #4)(85)

No one else but me.

There were days that I felt so lost, not knowing what happened to my life. The life that I hated was now replaced with a life I didn’t recognize.

The irony was not lost on me.

I was home alone one day a few months ago. Austin had gone on a run. He had been drawing all morning, still pictures of me, of us. Always capturing the happy memories, never the sad ones. For some reason I went into the closet and grabbed his old notebook, the one that I had opened for the first time years go, wanting to finally see a part of his life. I sat on our bed, my favorite place in the entire apartment, smelling him all around me.

Craving him to be there holding me.

Feeling like I was found in a moment where I felt so lost. My fingers turned to the very first sketch he ever drew of me. The drawing where I was dancing, so free not knowing that my life was about to change forever. Taking a drastic detour to the love I’d always wanted.

I tore the picture out of the notebook, instantly turning it over. I started writing. After years of reading books, I began writing the story of my life. Starting from the day Daisy Mitchell died. I transferred the few paragraphs to a Word document on my computer. Every so often I would pick up my laptop and write a few more paragraphs, a few more sentences, a few more pages. Usually when I felt lost again, which seemed to be happening a lot more lately.

“You have two days, do you hear me? If it’s not f*cking done, you’ll have to answer to me, and trust me, you don’t want to f*ck with me.” Austin hung up the phone, bringing me back to the present.

“Sorry about that, baby.”

He was like night and day with a flick of a switch. Like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in a blink of an eye. But the man I loved was back. He kissed my face and pulled me into his arms. As if he knew what I was thinking, what I was feeling, what I needed that only he could ever give me. And just like that. He made everything…

Go away.





Chapter 26





<>Briggs<>



I needed a break.

I needed to step back and look at the whole picture, not just what was in front of me from day to day. My mixed emotions caused chaos all around my mind. Wreaking havoc all around my life and what it had become.

I felt like I was a hamster on a spinning wheel, running in circles with no end in sight. Our relationship had always been intense and still was to that day. From the second we laid eyes on each other in Miami, the whole world disappeared and we started to live in our own little bubble. Our own little creation where nothing else existed or mattered, only each other. I went from being alone, from having no one, hating my life and where it was going till, him.

Till Austin.

He became my everything. My best friend. My only friend. My lover. My partner. My confidant. I was happy, for the first time in my life, I was really truly happy to have found someone that was just as alone as I was. Someone who needed me as much as I needed them.

Love was blinding and at times cruel. You only saw what you wanted to see, what you so desperately desired. Only picturing the good, never the bad.

I didn’t realize that Austin had demons that lurked within him, or maybe I did and ignored the signs. Maybe it had always been just waiting around the corner.

For the taking.

His bright blue eyes that I loved for so many years were dull and void now. I couldn’t remember the last time I saw them shining bright, full of life. They had been replaced with a dilated gaze. The darkness out-weighed the light and the life that I once cherished.

I could still see his love for me. Even behind the lies I told myself everyday.

He knew me inside and out. I used to love that he was the only person that had ever touched my heart, my soul. It built the bond we shared. Now it just felt like a double-edged sword, placed directly in my heart. There were days I saw him. My Austin peeking back at me through the drug-induced haze, the haze that seemed to always surround him.

I didn’t want to believe what was so blatantly in front of my face. It was easier to live in denial instead of admitting the truth that I knew in my heart.

I walked around New York aimlessly the entire day, lost in my thoughts. The city was alive all around me, yet I still felt like I was walking the streets in slow motion. Strangers were passing me by in a blur. I lied and told Austin I was going to the spa. That I needed a girl day and I was finally using the gift certificate he had given me to spoil myself for the day.

Truth was, I wanted out of my f*cking apartment. I needed out. The walls were caving in on me the more I was around the truth. It was easier to live in the lies than the reality. There were always people around, hanging out, drinking, doing drugs. We were rarely alone anymore. Drugs were everywhere all the time. Spread around the apartment, on the kitchen island, on the coffee table, on the dining room table. With the open floor plan, I had nowhere I could escape it.

My safe haven had become my Hell.

Austin and I fought about it often and his answer was always the same. He would say he understood. That it wouldn’t happen again. That he loved me. That I was his girl. That he was sorry.

He was always, always f*cking sorry…

When I made it back to the apartment it was already nighttime. I heard the loud music blaring the second I opened my car door in the parking garage. It vibrated against the walls of my small building. I was instantly thankful I only had three other people that lived on my floor and most of the time they weren’t even home. I knew security wouldn’t do a damn thing about the noise. My uncle had everyone on his f*cking payroll. Even the cops would look the other way.