Page 96 of Beautifully Scarred

“I can’t witness you like this anymore. Don’t you understand how much I love you? We were here.” I raise my hand over my head. “and in one swoop, I’m here.” I lower my hand below my waist. “You’re killing me. You do realize you lied to me on a pinkie swear?” I run my fingers through my hair. “I worried you might lose your sobriety, but even when you were so high you literally thought you could fly, you never lied to me on a pinkie swear.”

The more I recount the scene in my head, the more my anger calms but sadness seeps in. This is really the end of us because I can’t keep saving her.

“I didn’t.”

I hold my hand up in the air to stop her. I can’t bear to hear her bullshit. “You’ve finally done it, Lilah. For years you tried to ruin us. Congratulations, you finally did.”

“No.” She drops to her knees on the sidewalk, begging me with her eyes as tears tumble down her face.

Before rehab, this would have been par for the course, but this time, I thought she was all in, done with the games, done with ruining everything good in her life. I believed her—heart and soul. Only for her to break me again. Break my trust that she loves me just as much as I love her. The trust that I mean as much to her as she does me. Maybe I could have handled a relapse. But this is a betrayal.

Well, I’m the fucking fool, aren’t I? She’ll never change.

Grief and anger well up inside me and spill out. “I’m not doing this anymore. This cycle has to stop. You’ve stolen everything from me! Do you understand? I have nothing more to give!”

“Jimmy…” she says through hiccupping sobs.

“There is no explanation that will make this okay.” Something tickles my cheek, and I reach up and realize that tears are running down my face. “I want you to get your shit out of my place.”

Her hands drop from her face, and she looks at me in complete shock before pain lances through her features. I push away the impulse to console her, to fix the situation for her. Give her a hug and tell her it’s okay.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. No more. I’m done with this asylum.

“I love you,” she whispers.

I lean in, my face contorted with rage. “No. You don’t. Find some other schmuck to clean up your messes.”

I stalk away, trying to push the pain of betrayal from my mind, but it’s like a thousand-pound cinder block stacked on my heart. I slide into my car peel out of the parking lot, leaving behind the woman who was my everything, but instead took everything from me.

Chapter Forty-two

LILAH

“You gonna stare at that thing all night or drink it?”

Glancing at the bartender through puffy, sore eyes, I say nothing.

I have no idea how I got here. I mindlessly scraped myself up off the sidewalk, though I do have a vague memory of walking aimlessly through the streets.

The bartender shrugs and walks off to help another customer.

Pain stabs my chest when I remember the look on Jimmy’s face in Bernie’s office.

I want to shrivel up and die.

He will never forgive me. There’s zero hope for reconciliation.

I grip the shot of whiskey. Whiskey because it reminds me ofhim.

What will the fallout be from what happened tonight? Will Bernie leak the info on Jimmy? Does it matter? I’ve done him more damage than anyone else could ever do anyway.

A lone tear slides down my cheek, burning as it snakes a path over my raw skin.

The fragment of my heart that held out hope that we’d share a future withers and dies. I stop fighting my demons and give myself over to the darkness clawing within.

Gripping the shot glass hard, it looks like salvation from the crippling feeling that I destroyed the one person I loved the most.

I pick the shot glass up off the lacquered wood bar top and bring it to my lips. My mouth waters as the scent wafts into my nose.

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