Page 108 of Bona Fide

Make what happen?

No idea, as I said, I wasn’t listening. Nor do I care to ask her what she’s even talking about.

Emmy was a lot of things, but fixing a broken heart wasn’t on her résumé. Repairing a broken soul and mind wasn’t within her power to do. I’ve wasted both her time and mine because becoming the next President of the United States—that journey became my demise. That path drove me here, where I was mentally battered, physically exhausted, and emotionally massacred. I never saved a small piece of me to keep locked up and safe. I left all my cards out, thinking it’d make me stronger. But what happens when someone takes a machete to your world and cuts deep holes into it?

Everything falls and seeps out through the cracks leaving you with nothing behind.

“I’m not leaving you. We’re going to get through this together.”

There is no together. It’s just you. And me.

And I’d never drag Em deeper into shit when she’s already neck-deep in it. She was worth saving, and by doing that, I had to let her go. Not deeper into the trenches of my fucked-up life where I was sinking deeper and deeper.

“I’m going to grab you a pillow and blanket.”

Go home, Em.

The words don’t leave my mouth though, they’re numb and lodged in my throat. They’re caked with heartache.

I love Reagan Shelton.

She was my entire world.

Until she took an atomic bomb to my soul and left me alive to be a cripple.

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