Page 53 of Hold Me Closer
I knew she struggled after the accident. But I didn't fucking know… Ah, Christ. I should have known.I should have fucking known.
All the years she spent angry with me. All the times she said she needed me and I wasn't there… They were never about the accident. Or at least not entirely. They were about this. Because she was in fucking rehab, struggling with PTSD, and she was fighting alone.
"Any comment?" the reporter asks me.
"I don't know what you're talking about," I mumble, stumbling away from him. "Stop spreading bullshit."
Except…he knows it isn't bullshit. And so do I.
This is what she's been hiding. What she didn't want to tell me. She fucking needed me, and I wasn't there. I was too fucking busy hating myself to even know she needed me.
Goddammit.
Goddamn me.
I can't forgive this. I fuckingcan't.
My throat closes up, agony ripping through me as tears well in my eyes. Grief and pain slam into me like a brick wall. Christ, I'm going to break us all over again, just like I feared. Because that's what I do. I fuck things up. I break them.
I've been breaking her for years, over and over again. And I was too fucking busy with my own goddamn self-inflicted misery to even see it. I don't deserve her. I never will. How the fuck can I when all I do—all I've ever done—is let her down?
I stumble away from the reporter, away from the bus, my fucking heart in pieces in my chest.
"Is that Teo Kirby?"
I push through the crowd, ignoring the whispers following me. They burn my fucking ears like a goddamn scarlet letter branded on me. Teo Kirby, the fuckup. Teo Kirby, the asshole. Teo Kirby, the violent prick. And they're all true. But they don't even know the worst one yet.
Teo Kirby, the selfish motherfucker who breaks everything.
That's the one I can't escape.
"Vodka," I growl, falling onto an empty stool at the bar. "Make it a double."
The brunette bartender doesn't say anything for a long moment; she just stares at me as if trying to decide whether or not she wants to deal with me.
"Did I fucking stutter?" I snap.
She sighs heavily, flipping a shot glass up onto the bar in front of me while reaching for the vodka. "If you fuck up my bar, I'm shoving this bottle where the sun doesn't shine," she says, tipping it up to fill the glass.
"Good." I scoop up the glass, eyeing her over the rim. "Because I fully intend to fuck up your bar. Don't intend to leave until they drag me from this motherfucker in cuffs."
"Great. Guess you're going to make your new girl real proud tonight, huh?" She crosses her arms to scowl daggers at me. "I hope she dumps your sorry ass. She deserves better."
"That's precisely the problem, sweetheart. She deserves better."
The bartender rolls her eyes, stomping away from me.
Fuck.
I squeeze my eyes closed, inhaling the pungent scent of the alcohol. I'm not wrong. She does deserve better. I destroyed her life. I destroyed us. And while I was pretending my goddamn life was so bad because I didn't have her, hers was literally hell. She went through it alone. She survived it alone.Idid that to her. She was in that car because of me. She died because of me. She suffered because of me. And then she had to pull herself out by herself because I was too busy feeling sorry for myself to fight for her the way she deserved.
I fucking broke her. I broke us.
And she's still trying to protect me from the fallout.
"Fuck," I mutter, slamming the full glass back down on the bar.
I can't do this. I made a promise. It still means something. Hell, it means everything. I may not deserve her. But she deserves the world.
