Page 81 of Clause & Effect
“I like my life,” I tell him what he already knows. “I love my freedom.”
“If you keep her, you will without a doubt change your life forever.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Stetson didn’t call me back like he promised—not at all.
He really didn’t call me.
The words echoed through my head from the moment I sat down for dinner, to the second my head hit the pillow in my dark, sad room. Yes, it’s quite sad right now because I am devastated.
He. Didn’t. Call. Me.
I can’t believe it. That’s what the problem is. It’s that I really can’t believe he didn’t reach out and for once, I didn’t reach out to him. I didn’t text him like the old Charlie would have to be cute and check in and to hope desperately that nothing had changed. No, this time I’m letting myself sit with it.
Because Grace was right and yet again, I foolishly believed I could trust my gut. I’m seriously going to figure out a way to get a gut transplant when I’m home because lord knows this gut of mine has made some serious mistakes recently. It feels better to blame something when I know it could be me. I could be the problem, not my instincts, maybe in the end I wasn’t enough maybe. No I shake my head, I know I didn’t make those things up, the moments between us the things we shared.
Before I can go down a dark dumb gut road, I think I hear a noise in the room…no, but then the bed sinks down next to me and strong arms I remember so well encircle me from behind. I feel his beard in my neck, and I melt up against him. He feels so familiar.
And he smells like sweet home.
“Miss me?” He whispers against my ear as he begins to trail kisses down my neck.
“I did,” I admit shamelessly. “A whole lot.”
“Me too.”
And then I forget to think because I’m lost in the vortex of Stetson.
He’s gonein the morning. Just like he was never here and on the bed in all its shining glory is the clause. I’m afraid it isn’t real. I really wish I was imagining it, but there it is in all of its shining glory staring up at me, daring me all over again.
My hands graze the special parchment paper as my gaze draws down to the signature lines and on the spot I signed next to his name is a stamp that says void.
Void as if it never happened.
Void as if I never existed.
Void.
Gone.
The end.
I choke out a sob and fall to the ground. No, no, he can’t do that! He just, he just made it as if we never happened as if we never existed— he just gave me memories and took them back again. I reach for it again only for the clause to pullsome freakingMission Impossibleshit for brains move and self-destruct into a tiny poof of crystals all the while a jingle sounds in the background like I should be happy. It’s the first time I actually hate the sound of Christmas magic.
I can’t say anything to Grace or Devon, I can’t pretend I went into this with my eyes closed either, I can only manage to stare at the wall as the sound of Christmas fades around me and wonder if maybe I’m crazy, maybe loneliness really is a bitch and I imagined all of his kisses, touches, all his words—but promises? No, he never made those in fact he said his fate wouldn’t be like his father’s, he said he would never become like him.
I don’t think he meant alone.
I think he meant heartbroken.
Better to break someone else’s then wait for it to happen to you? Does that mean he really did feel something and ran away?
Does it even matter at this point?
I try to sleep for the next hour but between crying and jumping when I hear a noise thinking it might be Stetson returning— sleep doesn’t really come. When I go up later for breakfast I expect to get grilled by Grace and Devon, but I don’t, they can clearly see the misery on my face but don’t realize I had a night of goodbyes with him.
Because that’s what it was, a stereotypical, ‘I love you too much to stay’ bullshit goodbye without any promises of tomorrow, only kisses in the moment. Was his goal to get me to hate Christmas forever? To hate men?
