Page 74 of Heartbreaker
“That’s not what happened, though, is it?” I don’t mean to yell, and I take a deep breath to try to calm myself before I speak again. “Did it ever occur to you, when Drake—I assume, it was Drake who told you this, right?” She doesn’t answer. “Did it occur to you when he was telling you all of this that maybe, just maybe, I was looking out for you?” I ask, and after a moment, Savannah rolls her lips between her teeth, looking away from me. Something in her refusal to answer tells me that she had considered it, so why wasn’t she willing to accept it? “Tell me something, Savannah, did we sleep together before Wrestlefest?”
Her gaze rises to meet mine again, but she refuses to answer, crossing her arms again.
“No,” I say. “We didn’t. You want to know why? Because despite how desperate I was for you, how badly I wanted you…I wasn’t going to let him win. I wasn’t going to let that be the reason I got to be intimate with you again. And sure, I could’ve told him we didn’t, even if we did, but I never wanted him to have that over me.”
“I’m supposed to just be okay with this? Because you were ‘doing it for me?’” Savannah adds air quotes to the words for emphasis.
“No! I’m not saying that. Be mad. Be upset. Be whatever you need to be, but don’t just leave.”
Her face falls, and she lets her tongue run over her lips. I notice a wetness coating her eyes. “You paid him, John. You fucking paid—”
“Because I had to, Savannah. If I hadn’t, it never would’ve stopped. He would’ve never stopped. I did what I had to do to put a stop to things once and for all.”
“You should’ve told me!”
“Would you have agreed to go on that date?”
“I-I don’t know,” Savannah stutters. “Can you say that it’s not the only reason you finally chose to ask me?”
“You didn’t want me to, Sav.” For so long, she stuck to her guns about not dating a coworker, even me. I never knew when the right time would be without seeming pushy. “You didn’t want anyone to. You said—”
“And yet, I said yes to you!” Savannah scoffs. “You want to know why? Because I realized that I would always want more, John. There would alwaysbemore—always be some new opportunity, some title to chase—but I realized I didn’t have to do it alone. I didn’t want to do it alone; I wanted to do it with you. And I thought that’s what you wanted, too, but y-you didn’t want that, you didn’t even want to ask me out—”
“I love you, Savannah,” I say, taking a step closer to her. Wiping away one of the tears in the corner of her eye, I fight the urge to kiss her. “I am in love with you and despite what you might think—”
“Don’t say that.” Savannah shakes her head, stepping back. “Don’t you dare say that.” She rakes a hand through her long hair as she paces. “You don’t love me. That’s not love, John. You don’t do this to someone you love. You don’tlieto them for years. You don’t hide things. I thought I knew you, but it’s obvious I don’t know you at all.” She pulls back when I reach for her. “First, you don’t even trust me to be in a simple storyline—”
“I don’t trust him, Savannah. Look what he’s done already.”
“What he’s done?” She scoffs. “You interfered in my business, in my work. I’ve never done that to you. No matter what it was. I always let you do what needed to be done.”
I knew it was wrong, but the thought of them working together didn’t sit right with me. Or maybe it was my self-consciousness—fear that if they worked together, what was happening right now would have happened. Guess that didn’t work out so well, huh?
“You want to know something, Brooks?” Savannah asks, and the use ofBrookscuts me to my core. “I could’ve lived with that…With you getting involved and sticking your nose in my business. I could have gotten past it, but what I can’t get past is learning the only reason you ever gave a damn about me is because of some bet.”
There are so many things I want to say, but I can’t get the words to come out.
“I’m going home. I need some time…to think.”
“Savannah—” I reach for her, but she pulls away and pushes out the door without another word.
It’s been two days since Savannah walked off the bus. I’m supposed to be on a plane to Europe for the holiday tour overseas, but so is she. After she rejected my phone calls yesterday and ignored all my text messages, I decided to put some distance between myself and the Orlando airport…on a plane in the opposite direction I should be heading.
The first thing I notice when I pull into the driveway of our Crystal Bay home is the moving truck, and the second is her car with the keys in the ignition, as if she was about to leave, but ran back inside because she forgot something. This is not what I expected to find, but part of me questions whether I’m actually surprised. She was going to leave Orlando without saying goodbye; why wouldn’t she do the same now?
I search downstairs, but she’s nowhere to be found, and there’s no response when I call her name—not until I’m halfway up the staircase and she appears at the end of the hallway, carrying a box.
“You’re supposed to be on a plane,” she says.
“So are you,” I say, taking the final steps up to the second floor. “Savannah, don’t do this. I love you. I’m sorry—”
“You don’t even know what that means!” Her voice carries through the house that suddenly feels empty, the way it used to, before her. “You don’t love me.”
Her words hit me like a brick wall. How can she say that?
“You love the idea of me, Brooks, but that’s not…that’s not enough for me, and it shouldn’t be enough for you.”
“That’s not true, Sav. I loveyou, not some idea. You, and only you.”
