Landon & Shay: Part Two (L&S Duet #2)(30)

Then came the pictures.

Pictures of Landon and Sarah freaking Sims cuddled up. Pictures of them getting lunch together. Photographs of her arms wrapped around him. Her lips kissing his cheeks. His smile.

His smile.

Oh my gosh, he never came to me with his smiles anymore, only his darkness. But with her, he was beaming from ear to ear with excitement. There was so much light in his eyes that it made me want to cry. And scream. And shatter.

Then the last photograph was their kiss.

Their. Kiss.

They. KISSED!

His lips against hers. Her lips against his.

They looked so perfect together, as if they were a puzzle with perfectly cut matching pieces, fitting together in a way I only dreamed of fitting beside Landon.

I was going to vomit.

Tracey: I told you that you were wasting your time with that loser.

There it was, the ‘I told you so’ Tracey had been waiting to give me for years now. Raine texted me separately outside of the group text.

Raine: Are you okay?

Raine: I’m on my way back to our place.

That night, I sobbed into Raine’s arms, feeling humiliated, saddened, and furious. My core hurt as I cried, my words inaudible between my hiccupping. She soothed me, rocking me back and forth in her arms as I fell apart for a boy who’d betrayed me in the most painful way. Not once that night did Raine scold me for crying over a boy like him. Not once did she say she’d told me so like Tracey had. She simply held my broken pieces in her hands and told me to let my emotions out.





10





Landon





You’re hurting me.

I hadn’t stopped replaying those words in my heads since Shay spoke them.

They were on an endless loop in my mind. The one person I was never supposed to hurt, was in pain because of me, and I knew I needed to fix it.

I came back to Illinois a few weeks after the smoke cleared from my personal hell. I wanted to see Shay and explain everything to her. She deserved that, at least. She deserved a reason for why I was the way I was, and how everything fell apart for me over the past few months.

“You damn idiot,” I muttered to myself. I should’ve just told her what was going on. I should’ve let her in because I knew she’d probably be able to calm my wildness, but a part of me didn’t think I deserved to be healed.

Even though I fought it every single day, my depression was beginning to cripple me again. After being okay for so long, it was as if my father’s death acted as a slingshot, flung me into the air, and I was stuck in the webs of despair, unable to break free. I tried to ignore it. I pretended it didn’t exist, but that seemed to only make it worse. Sometimes you couldn’t run from depression—you had to face it head on, and when I turned to look mine in the eyes, it almost killed me.

The only time I felt safe falling apart was when I was in Shay’s arms. She felt like my safe haven. A place I could be both damaged and broken. She was my heaven and I was her hell.

I headed back to Shay’s to talk to her. When I parked the car, I walked up to her front door with a pathetic bouquet made of Laffy Taffys and peanut butter M&M’s, along with our notebook. Right before I was about to knock, I heard laughter from inside. I looked in the window and saw Shay tossing her head back in chuckles, looking happy as ever, and beside her was some guy, laughing with her. Some fucking guy with his hand against her thigh. Some fucking guy making her laugh. Who the fuck was that guy?

My blood started to boil with anger at the sight of him touching her legs. Who the hell did he think he was? I went to barge into a house when a voice stopped me.

“What are you doing here?”

I turned around to see Tracey standing there with her backpack on. She looked surprised to see me.

I took a step away from the front door. “Hey, Tracey.”

“Don’t ‘Hey, Tracey’ me, Landon. What the hell are you doing here?” she barked, her eyes blazing with rage. Her stare moved to the window where Shay and that fucking guy were still chatting it up. “You need to leave, Landon. You need to leave her alone and let her move on from that bullshit you did to her.”

“Tracey—”

“No. I mean it. You don’t know what she’s been through. You don’t know how many nights she’s spent crying herself to sleep because you up and abandoned her. You don’t know how many times Raine and I have had to console her over you. I mean, honestly, Landon. What the actual fuck?! She went through fire and brimstone to take care of you, and this is how you repay her? All these years, she stood behind you and supported you, and you decide it’s okay to crush her like this?”

I grimaced. “I know. I messed up.”

“You more than messed up. You ruined the best thing that happened to you. Now go.”

I glanced one more time toward Shay and that fucking guy, and then lowered my head. “I can’t leave without explaining things to her.”

“She doesn’t need an explanation or your lame excuses. She needs to move on, and that’s what she’s doing.”

“With that guy?” I huffed, annoyed, hurt, sad. Mostly sad. So fucking sad. My scarred heart was bleeding out, and I didn’t know how to make it stop.

“Yes. Jason is great for her. They have a lot in common and have been friends for a long time, too.”