Page 128 of Tarek

I keep myself from lunging at him, I grip the edge of the kitchen. She left me, she didn’t even bother to say where or when.

“Why? What the fuck happened?” I ask.

“I can’t tell you,” Archer says.

Something inside of me snaps. “The fuck you mean you can’t tell me?”

Archer tilts his head, studying me, his expression is unreadable. “Penny doesn’t do relationships, not for long anyway. She leaves before anyone leaves her.”

“That is bullshit.” An inferno begins to rage within me. “She said she loves me, and I told her…I told her I love her back.”

Archer nods and scratches his chin. His silvery eyes meet mine. “And that’s the problem right there.”

“Me loving her? Or she loving me?” I ask.

“Both. Love has always been a loaded gun to her. Other than mom or me. Everyone she loves leaves. She doesn’t trust love, and she doesn’t trust herself with it.”

“Is there more to this?” I ask.

Archer nods and bites his bottom lip. “I probably shouldn’t be telling you this…but. I don’t know, something about you makes me feel I can. She…she just found out she can’t have children.”

My legs feel weak, when I hear about her infertility, the pain that she experienced, the doctor and the things he said to her.

“She thought you’d want something that she can’t give you,” he continues. “She didn’t want to lose you, so she left first.”

A dark laugh bubbles up in me; it slips out before I could stop it. It doesn’t sound like me. It sounds like something else entirely…like a demon that has been dormant, finally waking up.

“She thought she was protecting you,” Archer adds.

“Protecting me? She didn’t give me a choice. She doesn’t believe in me. In us.” bitterness edges my voice.

What hurts is that she didn’t trust me enough to sit me down and tell me all of this. She didn’t love me enough to say something. Part of me wants to run after her. I want to scream at her and drag her back.

I turn to the opened door and I knew I would never be walking back into this home. She fucking left me. I want to pick up the box and throw it at the wall. But I keep it in. This is the first time I give a necklace to someone, and they left me willfully.

“She is scared,” he adds.

“What’s happening to the house?” I ask.

“Selling it. Listen to someone who knows her. Don’t go searching for her. Go live your life, she is not coming back.”

Archer pulls a sleek black card from his pocket. “If you have any questions, call me.”

I take the card without looking at him, the edges cutting into my hands like tiny blades. My fist trembles, not in weakness but in rage.

I want to scream that she is a coward, and I wouldn’t want a coward as a fucking wife, anyway.

I’m not going after her. I will never beg a woman to come back to me. I did that once to a woman, and she killed her fucking self before my eyes.

“That’s it?” I ask, hoping for some more explanation.

Archer places his hand on his hips. “Yup that’s it.”

I grab the box from the counter and storm out. I feel like burning her whole fucking house down!

This is what I get for loving someone. It’s like I am fucking cursed. Every time I decide that I love someone, they run or they fucking die. This is why I stopped caring, why I don’t do fucking relationships, because all I end up with is a broken heart. Luckily for me, Penny just ripped out whatever heart I had left. The weight in my chest presses harder, suffocating me. I drop the box letting its contents topple down the stairs.

I refuse to look back. Not at Archer, not at the house filled with memories. Why look back at someone who doesn’t want me. Penny was gone and with her the last piece of me that believed in love. The last piece of me that believed I could be anything but broken. My world feels stormy, darker. But maybe that’s how it’s meant to be.

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