Craving The Player (Amateurs In Love Book 1)(79)
“Wasting your time? Nice,” she scoffs, looking at me again with narrowed, raging eyes.
“If I would have known that you would be leaving I wouldn’t have bothered letting you meet my parents or leave your shit all over my house! You made everything so much more complicated,” I hiss, running a hand through my hair and pulling at the ends painfully. My vision taints with red, an all-consuming anger tearing at my insides until they’re nothing but a shredded mess.
“Well it’s great to know that it’s so easy for you to throw me away and move on with your life. It’s not like I’m moving to another country! We could always try to make it work.”
“I’m just going to go,” Clayton mumbles, earning himself a glare from both of us as he scurries off to his bedroom.
When his door shuts behind him, I spin back to Sierra, a dangerous mix of betrayal and a hurt so deep that I feel winded building deep in my chest.
“Try to make what work? As much as I love fucking you, I’m not going to fly across the country to have an endless tap of your pussy.” I laugh humourlessly, ignoring the ache in my chest when I see the new shine in her silver eyes. My protective walls slide back up, where they should have been the entire fucking time. I was a helpless idiot to think it was okay to let them down.
“Good to know,” she whispers, shoulders dropping before she’s walking to the front door, not sparing me a second look.
I’m hot on her heels, aching to push her against the wall and fuck this decision right out of her. I don’t want her to leave, but the words don’t stop flowing from my fat mouth, deepening the rift that’s now formed between us.
“I wish you the best of luck. I’m sure Cole will be there for all of those lonely nights,” I say, although I find the words burning the entire way up my throat.
She slips her shoes on quickly and opens the door, hesitating in the doorway. “I knew that you wouldn’t come with me. That’s why I didn’t say anything. I knew that telling you I took the job would have meant the end of us. I should have told you, I know that. I just wanted more time.”
And then she’s gone, stepping into the hallway and disappearing from my life.
I can’t find it in myself to chase her, or close the door once she’s gone, no matter how badly I try. Instead, I send my fist through the wall and watch the drywall dust float in the air, too numb to care that my blood now drips on the floor.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Sierra
My feet ache and my arms feel like warm string cheese. The box I’m holding wobbles as I attempt to move it from my bedroom to the living room. To some, it might seem pointless to move a singular box from one room to another just a few feet away, but with the number of boxes cluttering up my bedroom, I'll take whatever free space I can manage.
Waking up in the middle of the night to go to the washroom, only to end up stubbing your big toe on a heavy box and falling on your ass isn't how I would like to spend my last two nights here.
My sigh of relief replaces the sound of my laboured breathing when I finally place the collection of picture frames on the floor. The glass clatters as the poorly packed frames bang around inside the box.
Too drained to care, I just stretch out my cramped arms and kick the mess of broken glass away.
That’s a problem for another day. And it’s not like I have many family pictures inside that box, anyway. Most of the frames are filled with lame quotes that at one point in my life, made me think that I could take on the world. At this point, I don’t think that I could take on the world even if I woke up gifted with every superpower known to man.
With an embarrassing slouch in my shoulders, I head for the fridge in desperate need of some water. I push away the three open boxes full of pots, pans, and baking sheets before finally pulling open the door.
The cold air makes me sigh with a weird mix of relief and pleasure. My eyes burn from exhaustion as I fight to keep them open, knowing full well how nasty my under eye circles must be by now.
I haven’t slept more than three hours a night in the past three days. Since leaving Braden’s house, I’ve been lost in a sea of regret and confusion, unsure of where to go now. My future flashing in front of me in the shape of a giant question mark. I don’t know if I’ve made a huge mistake, or taken a risk that will end up paying off in the end. I’m sure if my mother knew what I did she would praise me up and down, so proud of me for putting my career before anything else.
Is that what I want? To have made a decision that would have pleased my mother of all people?
The bottle of water meets my sweaty palm as I unscrew the lid like a maniac and finish the contents in a few gulps. The plastic crunches when I twist it and throw it towards the recycle bin, not bothering to look if it ended up on the floor or not.
Three light knocks on my front door have me smiling, knowing exactly who’s on the other side.
“Coming!” I all but run to the door, too excited to see my sister and niece to be able to keep myself under control. When I pull open the door, my smile pulls into an even wider grin.
Clare stands with Liz on her back, legs wrapped around her waist in a bear grip. Both girls radiate happiness and love. It’s an addicting, nearly overwhelming aura that I still haven’t been able to fully comprehend. How could I? The only time I’ve experienced a bond even remotely the same is with my sister. And even then, it’s not the same as what she has with her daughter.