Page 104 of Fall Into Me

He’d made me believe that he was here to ruin the only thing I had left that wasmine.

Was itfunfor him? To watch me scramble and figure out a way to convince him that this one, tiny slice of the world deserved to be left untouched?

Even if it had been a game at the start for him, what about after? What about now? He’d had his fun. He’d clearly had his answer on what he was going to do since well before he even showed up, and instead of making it quick and easy, he dragged it out.

Blew up my whole fucking life.

A life I had painstakingly put together with pieces that I knew didn’t fit right, but they’d held nonetheless.

I felt his eyes on me the whole day. The further I sunk into myself, the harder he stared, and I felt like I was going to be sick.

“Cali, what’s wrong?” His voice was gentle enough to make my eyes prick with the onslaught of tears of anger, tears of pain, tears of fucking frustration and humiliation. Of telling my stupid heartnot yet. Not fucking yet.And having to face the truth that it went ahead and leaped for him anyway.

“I want to go home,” I said, my voice trembling with the weight of everything.

“Cali—”

“Take me home, Fane.”

The car ride home was silent, even though I could feel how desperate he was to break it. Jerry didn’t even bother to get off the couch when we walked through the front door, a sure signthat he was getting as used to having Fane in his life as I was, and that alone felt like another twist of the knife.

“Are we going to talk about it?”

“I have nothing to say to you.” I crossed my arms, standing across from him in the same pointless entry room that had witnessed all the different ways this man had torn apart my heart, and it still didn’t make the room any more useful.

“I don’t get it. What happened? Is this about what I said in the car?”

“Oh.” I perked up, finger flying into the air like I’d never had an idea before in my life. “You mean when you said that you’d already decided that you weren’t going to touch Darling for any sort of development?”

“Yes?”

“So, you thought it was a good idea to just roll into town anyway. To show up unannounced after two whole years like that would be a completelyfinething to do?”

“I—”

“That you thought it would befineto dismantle the brand-new foundation I had created for myself. To move into my house. Tosleepin myfucking bed!”All those tears from before started to run down my face, and I smacked them away furiously.

“I created alifehere. A life without you. How dare you come here and ruin it all. I was fine, Fane. I had becomefine.”

“The Calista I knew would have never settled for ‘fine.’” He even did the air quotation marks, and I wanted to scream at him because he knew how much they infuriated me.

“The Calista you knew,” I spat the words at him. “Had her heart shattered into a thousand pieces and had no one to help her pick any of it up. It might just be me, but that sort of thing tends to change a person.”

He looked like I’d slapped him. Like maybe if I had, it would have been better than forcing him to hear the words.

“Cali.” He took a step toward me, hands limp at his sides and face utterly devastated. He took a deep breath, and I realized whether I wanted it or not, whether I was prepared to hear it or not, I was about to get his ‘why’.

“I was twenty-six,” he began. His voice was raw and jagged and tortured. “And you scared the shit out of me.”

I scoffed.

“You don’t think I was scared too?” I threw the words back at him, uncaring that the neighbors were likely witnessing the way my heart was breaking all over again. “I wasterrified,Fane. I barely even knew whoIwas when I met you, and all of a sudden, there you were. This person who had so fucking quickly becomeeverything. Maybe it was wrong of me to put that pressure on you, I’ll own that, but it doesn’t change the fact that youwere. And when my whole world started to crumble, you were the last fucking retaining wall, and you walked away from me.”

“I didn’t.” The muscle in his jaw twitched, and I was positive I heard his bones creaking.

“You did,” I shot back. “You—”

“I had nothing to offer you, Cali.Nothing,”he cut me off, taking another step toward me. “I was a kid with no sense of responsibility, no fucking idea of how to look after someone the way I wanted to look after you. And when I needed to, Ididn’t know how.”

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