Page 15 of Mine to Keep

The tears continue until there’s nothing left, until my eyes are dry and my heart begins to harden with anger. I draw in a shaky breath, curling into a ball on top of my comforter. “Damn you, Tommy Sinclair,” I choke out between sobs. “For making me love you, then leaving me behind.”

Sunlight filters into my bedroom, and my puffy eyelids flutter open. A single glance at the empty space beside me is a punchto the gut, as Tommy’s absence is a tangible void in the cool morning air. I reach for my phone with a sliver of hope, my heart stuttering when the screen lights up to reveal his name. It’s a message, one I’ve been craving since that horrid night, since our blissful world came crashing down around us.

I press his name on my phone, and the words of his voicemail cut through the fog of my sleep-deprived brain. “I’m sorry, Kate. This wasmyfuckup. If I could fix it, I would. Please believe me.”

His voice holds a familiar warmth, and I imagine his furrowed brow with a shadow of regret in his intense brown eyes. My trembling thumb hovers over the keyboard while I take a slow breath, steadying my resolve before tapping out my reply.

Can we talk? Face to face?

After hitting send, I clutch the phone to my chest like a lifeline, waiting for it to vibrate with his response. There’s nothing, and my heart breaks a little more.

As the day drags on, and I shuffle aimlessly around my apartment, the silence from him weighs heavy on my shoulders. I busy myself with menial tasks. Straightening my bookshelf, cleaning my kitchen, rearranging pillows that don’t need rearranging. Anything to keep my mind off the empty chat bubble that haunts my screen.

By evening, the apartment is immaculate, and I’m anything but. My mind is a wreck, circling back to Tommy with every turn.

What is he doing? Why hasn’t he replied?

Then, finally, the phone rings, jolting me from my misery, and my pulse spikes with an erratic rhythm. I swipe to answer, pressing the cold device against my ear. “Tommy?” My voice cracks with emotion, laced with longing and trepidation.

“Kate.” Hearing his rich baritone causes goose bumps to appear on my arms. “I’ve been thinking... Maybe we should?—"

“Can’t we just figure it out?” I interrupt him, my knuckles turning white as I clutch the phone.

There’s a sigh on the other end, a sound that seems to echo through the empty space of my apartment. “I think we need some time apart. Let things cool off a bit.”

Those dreaded words fill my stomach with acid, and my heart plummets, while I feel like I’ve been cut to my very core. The room stands still, the ground beneath me feeling shaky as I plop onto the couch.

“You can’t mean that,” I protest as tears well in my eyes for the umpteenth time in the last forty-eight hours. “I never meant for any of this to happen, but I can’t pretend these feelings aren’t real.”

No, this isn’t how our story ends. Not with whispered apologies and a line gone dead. I won’t accept it.I just can’t.

As the quiet stretches on, my resolve shatters. I don’t know what else to say.

“I wish things could’ve?—”

“I love you, Tommy,” I profess before abruptly ending the call. If he doesn’t feel the same, I don’t want to hear it. The sting of his rejection is already painful enough.

I draw in ragged breaths, each one a mix of anger and sorrow as a fresh wave of tears spill down my face. I was foolish to think a man like him would fight for me, to think what we had was real, despite how fast it all seemed to happen. It was reckless, impulsive, and stupid.

And I won’t make that same mistake again.

7

TOMMY

She loves me. Kate loves me.

The weight of her words crushes me, a relentless pressure against my ribs as I sit at my desk. Her confession, defeated and unguarded, echoes in the hollows of my office, bouncing off the cold glass walls with a taunting persistence.

I rake a hand through my hair for the hundredth time this morning, the salt and pepper strands a testament to the years that separate us, to the barriers that should exist but I won’t allow. My heart is a traitor and beats only for her. I’m torn between my bond with my oldest friend and the love I feel for his incredible daughter.

I want to let her go. I should. Ineedto.

I can’t.

I can’t live without her now that I’ve experienced real happiness for the first time. Life is sweeter when she’s with me and I’d be a damn fool to give that up.

I stand, a decisive motion that scatters papers from my desk. They flutter to the ground like the remnants of my restraint, but I refuse to wait another minute. I love my friend, but I love Katemore. And I’ll make him see that no one could ever be a better man for his daughter than I am.

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