Page 97 of A Little More Forgiveness

“Us?” I scoffed. “There is no us. You left me standing on the sidewalk yesterday, remember? Like a piece of garbage you couldn’t wait to dispose of.” I pinned him with my stare. “No discussion, no goodbye, no…” My voice gave out as my mind replayed him driving away without a single glance.

“I know I did,” he said, about to take a step closer.

I shook my head at him to stop. If he got near me, the pathetic barriers I’d erected to restrain my emotions would shatter completely. That might make me weak, and I was where he and Gabe were concerned, but no matter my flaws, I still had some remnants of my battered pride left intact.

As usual, I’d been found wanting, and I’d had enough.

“Leo.” He sounded so pained, so desperate, I almost caved but steeled my heart and stood my ground.

“Why are you really here, Mitch?”

“I had to see you.”

“Why?”

He took in a lungful of air, his already massive chest expanding even more. “I had to see you to apologize for how I acted, how I left things.”

I released a bitter laugh. “Oh, please. Didn’t Gabe say we’d done enough apologizing already? It’s all we ever seemed to do. Doesn’t that tell you anything about how toxic we are together?”

“Actually, yes, it tells me a great deal about us.”

I shook my head at him. I hadn’t had anywhere near enough sleep for this shit. Shoving past him, I made my way over to the couch and flopped down. Laying my head against the cushions, I tried to ignore the hulking presence of Mitch as he stood there awkwardly. He eventually sat down on the coffee table in front of me, his heavy weight making the thing creak loudly.

“Probably best if you sit in the armchair.”

He didn’t. Instead, he moved to sit with me on the sofa, scant inches away. The heat from his leg so close to mine—it wouldn’t take much movement at all to have them touch. A small shuffle on my part, and we’d connect.

It took all my resolve not to do it.

He didn’t talk. Instead, he sat there quietly, the tense silence stretching my nerves to breaking point. His last words rolling around my head getting louder and louder until I might explode.

“Fine,” I snapped. “I’ll bite. What does our destructive relationship tell you?” I expected him to appear smug at having made me curious to hear his reply, but he remained stoic.

“It tells me we care about one another.”

“Hah! It tells me, we don’t give a shit about one another if we keep hurting the other and need to apologize all the time.”

“You’re wrong. The fact you do apologize reinforces the fact you care. If you didn’t care, why apologize? Why not ignore the situation and walk away?”

Flabbergasted, I stared at him. “Because I was stuck at your place, with no way to escape, remember?”

“Is that what you want to do now?”

I couldn’t answer him.

“Leo,” he prodded gently. “Do you still want to escape?”

Did I? I’d been through the ringer emotionally this last week, with the glorious high of finding two people so perfect for me and falling in love, to then experience the hellish low of both of those men rejecting me, casting me aside as if I meant absolutely nothing to them. If I had to do it all over again, would I have changed anything? Would I have missed out on loving Mitch and Gabe, however briefly, if I’d realized the pain and hollowness I’d feel once they were gone? No, no, I wouldn’t.

I wanted nothing more than to have another chance with him, with Gabe, but so much bitterness existed between us, so much animosity between Mitch and Gabe, I had no idea how we would ever work. In reality, we hardly knew one another at all. Stuck together in the cabin, confined in the small space due to circumstances beyond our control had been extremely frustrating. We’d been strangers and had to hastily learn about one another and adjust to the others’ quirks and personalities.

How we went from adjusting to fucking I’d no idea. And how I went from fucking to falling in love with them both remained an absolute mystery to me. But we did and I had. Totally. Irrevocably.

Until it all went to shit. If by some miracle we did get back together, wouldn’t we just end up going the same way again?

“So, what are you saying exactly?” I replied, not answering his question.

Mitch laid his hand on my thigh, stroking up and down. I lifted my head to stare at the movement, my heart misfiring as tingles of heat made their way along my legs right to my balls. I hated that he affected me so much, but I couldn’t help it. I yearned for his touch, craved for his fingers to caress my bare skin instead of my jeans, even though I shouldn’t want such things any longer.

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