The Anti-Boyfriend(62)

Carys placed her hand on my knee. “Aw, that’s sweet.”

Those were the last words I remembered before the crash.





CHAPTER 22





Carys



THE ONLY CONSOLATION



Two Months Later



Simone was coming by today, and it was going to be hard to put the last couple of months into words. I didn’t want to talk about them, but it was time to let it all out. Today I’d rehash every painful detail. What had been like a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from would now be essentially relived. In some ways, these weeks had gone by in a flash, and in others, it felt like forever since I’d seen Deacon.

Most mornings, I’d wake up, and it would take several seconds before reality set in—before it hit me all over again that Deacon was gone.

Deacon was gone.

No matter how often I went over everything in my mind, I’d never be able to wrap my head around him leaving New York. Was it a total surprise? No. He’d warned me. He’d warned me not to trust him, and I hadn’t listened. Wasn’t there a saying about that? When someone shows you who they are, believe them? Somehow I’d thought I’d be the person to change him, that his love for me would transcend his fears about getting involved with someone who had a child.

Something in him had snapped after the accident. He’d freaked out, and I couldn’t get the man I’d had before back. An accident had ruined his football career a decade ago, so maybe it was PTSD of some kind. Whatever it was, and wherever he was now, I hoped he was getting the help he needed.

It had been more than a month since Deacon left, and I would be explaining everything to Simone for the first time. She’d been in Paris, performing in a show there, when the accident happened. Even though she’d been back for a couple of weeks, I’d been too depressed to see her. But she’d insisted on coming to check on me today.

A little while later she arrived carrying two coffees from Starbucks. It was the first time I’d had Starbucks since Deacon last brought me one. I’d stayed away from there because it reminded me of him. How would I ever look at a Starbucks cup and not remember the first time he’d told me he loved me?

Simone put the coffees down on the table and brought me into a hug. “I’m so confused, Carys. Help me understand what the hell happened while I was away.”

I walked over and picked up my latte. Even the taste reminded me of him. My eyes lingered blankly on Simone’s name written on the side of the cup. I felt a tear forming before it fell.

I wiped my cheek. “Jesus. I told myself I wasn’t going to cry.”

“Whatever it takes, you need to get it out.” She looked around. “Where’s Sunny?”

“She’s napping.”

“Okay, good. It will give us some time to talk.”

We brought our coffees over to the couch. I’d previously told Simone the basics about the accident—that a car had hit us on our way home from the farm in Poughkeepsie. We were banged up and bruised, but none of us were badly injured—on the outside anyway. But I hadn’t elaborated on anything that happened after. She just knew Deacon and I had broken up.

“Where do I even start?” I took a deep breath in and started to let it out. “The day of the accident was perfect. We’d taken Sunny to a farm upstate. We were like a little family. Deacon told Sunny he loved her. It was so beautiful.”

“This was all before the accident?”

I nodded. “The accident happened on the way home. A man driving a truck sideswiped our rental car, pushing us into a guardrail. We’d had the window down for Sunny, so it was noisy, but I don’t think that made a difference. It happened so fast. There was nothing we could have done to prevent it. I don’t think Deacon felt that way, though.”

She sighed. “I don’t understand…”

“Neither do I, really, Simone.” I shook my head. “Anyway, we all went to the emergency room as a precaution, but we were discharged pretty quickly. But Deacon just wasn’t the same. He spent more and more time at his apartment, away from us. He blamed himself for what happened, said his reflexes weren’t fast enough, that the wind had distracted his focus.”

“But it wasn’t his fault,” she insisted.

“No. But he felt he should’ve been able to protect us. I guess if we all hadn’t been buckled in, we might’ve died.”

“But you were buckled in. Why do you think he’s so hard on himself?”

I sighed. “It brought back a bad memory for him. He got into an accident in college, and it ended his football career.”

She nodded. “Okay…wow.”

“I tried to get him to talk about what he was feeling, but he just kept blaming himself, saying Sunny could have died, and it would’ve been his fault. I kept hoping things would change as the days went on, that he would snap out of it, but he never did.”

“When did he leave?”

“A few weeks after the accident. One night, he came over. I went to take a shower, since he’d be able to watch Sunny for a few minutes.” I closed my eyes at the memory. “When I came out, before he realized I was there, I heard him talking to her. At the end he said, ‘I know you won’t remember me, but I’ll never forget you.’”