Until the End (Sea Breeze #9)(43)

I stared at the room, unable to move. She was gone. She’d left. She hadn’t begged me to forgive her or made up excuses and lies. Last night she’d begged me to let her explain, but when I had yelled at her to shut up, she had, and she’d not said another word.

Not wanting to walk into the room I’d shared with Sadie, but knowing I had to face it, I moved toward it, preparing myself for her to be gone. The room felt cold as I entered it. Like any warmth or heat it had once had was gone.

I let my gaze travel over the room. The pictures of us were all gone, as were the pictures Sadie had of Jessica and Sam. The walls felt bare now.

The table on her side of the bed was now bare. Her lip gloss she kept by the bed and the book she had been reading were gone. The photo of the two of us on the night of our engagement party was also missing.

Had she taken that?

I knew opening her closet was going to rip me wide open. Her smell would be there still. Was I ready to face that? No. I wasn’t. I headed to the master bathroom instead. Seeing all her lotions and perfumes and random jewelry no longer scattering the marble counter made the room seem dull and lifeless.

I’d made love to her on the counter so many times. Memories flashed in my head, making the pain so severe I had to bend over to get through it. My knees started to give out and I turned and walked away. I had to get out of there. I could smell her as I passed the closet, and I inhaled deeply.

How was I going to live my life without that smell again? Without hearing her cry out my name and cling to me while I filled her? What I’d had with Sadie wasn’t something a man can forget. Pushing open her closet door, I stood there and let the scent of her engulf me. The purses I had bought her still lined the shelves, along with every pair of designer heels I had ever bought her. The outfits she’d worn to concerts, music awards shows, and to all the events we had attended still hung in the bags they were stored in. The only things missing were the Sadie clothes. The things that made her my Sadie. Her jeans, shorts, and T-shirts. She hadn’t taken the expensive clothing. She’d left all that. Did she even have a purse now? Did she have enough clothes?

Was she going back to her mom? In Sea Breeze? Where would she work? She had a degree in education that she hadn’t used yet because we didn’t have time for her to get tied down to a job. She had gone on tours with me and when I had to travel she went too. Would she teach school now?

She would need money. Fuck!

I turned to look at the drawers that I knew held all her jewelry. Maybe she had taken that. She could sell it and live for years. I stalked over and jerked open the top drawer to see it completely full. I knew without looking that the others would be just as full. Reaching down, I picked up the five-carat diamond I had put on her finger when I asked her to spend forever with me. She’d cried and nodded before throwing herself into my arms.

Now it was nestled safely in this drawer. No longer on her slender finger, telling the world she was mine. She wasn’t mine now.

Giving in to the devastation, I fell to my knees and dropped my head into my hands as the sobs broke through me.

I’d lost my world.

Sadie

Sam was cuddled up at my side, sound asleep, as I sat on the sofa in my mother’s house, which was bought and paid for by Jax Stone. It was a small three-bedroom house in a nice, safe neighborhood in Sea Breeze. I hadn’t allowed him to put her in anything bigger than this. There was no point. It was just her and Sam. She kept the third bedroom fixed up for the times Jax and I visited her, although we rarely stayed the night here.

I had left my phone with Barbara. It was one more thing that Jax Stone had given me. I wasn’t keeping a phone he paid for. I would call Amanda tomorrow when I was strong enough. Right now I needed to just let Sam distract me. He had shown me how he could write his ABC’s, and he had sung the national anthem for me. We had colored several pages from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles coloring book that I had sent him last week in the mail.

He had asked several times when Jax was coming. It had been like a knife to the heart every time he said his name. Jessica had explained to him the first few times that we wouldn’t be seeing Jax anymore, but he had been concerned and kept asking me. He loved Jax.

I finally forced myself to look at my little brother and explain that Jax and I had broken up and weren’t friends anymore. Then I had eased that blow by telling him that it meant I was moving into this house with him and Mommy. He had been upset over not seeing Jax and he kept bringing him up. But he was very excited about me staying here with them.

“I need to get him in bed. He has to be up bright and early for school,” Jessica said as she walked up to scoop him into her arms.

“Okay. Thanks for letting him stay up and keep my mind off things. I missed him.”

She smiled. “He’s the best medicine around,” she said, kissing his forehead before walking back to the hallway that led to the bedrooms.

Sam’s entrance into the world had been dramatic and destructive, but my mother had gotten it together and gotten medical help, thanks to Jax. She had become the mother I had never had. When I saw her with Sam, it warmed me. I loved seeing them both happy.

I pulled the throw off the back of the sofa and wrapped myself up in it before leaning back and closing my eyes. I hadn’t slept last night, and the events of the last forty-eight hours were starting to weigh on me. I hadn’t turned on the television all day. I wasn’t sure when the news would hit that we were broken up. I figured it would be when a picture of him with someone new was plastered all over the media. I wasn’t ready to see that.