Page 91 of Surviving Lies

“Stop!”I screamed against his chest. “I can’t take any more, Gage. This wasn’t supposed to happen with us. We weren’t supposed to care. Why do you care?”

He pulled me even closer, if that were possible.

“I shouldn’t have cared, Becca, I know,” he said. “But you’re hard to not care about, hard to not fall in love with.”

I heard the tears in his voice, in his declaration. “But I can’t love you. You’re not mine to love, and I’m not yours to love.”

His hand threaded through my hair, and I felt his desperation. A racing heartbeat thumped against my temple as he held me against him, not letting go.

“Becca,” he whispered into my hair. “I’m married.”

Chapter 27

Becca

“Becca, honey, eat something,” Lanie said to me through my closed door. I’d been holed up in my room for over twenty-four hours. At first, when I got home, the emotions exhausted me and I slept. For about ten hours. Then, when I awoke at midnight, I spent the next six or seven hours trying to distract myself with whatever I could within the four walls of my room.

I took a shower.

I watched Netflix.

I read a book.

I took a bath.

I even did homework.

By then, it was approximately 3a.m. Then I paced, stared out the window, and cried.

I did a lot of crying. I couldn’t understand what I’d done to deserve two assholes in my life. My thought process went spinning round and round, and I’d decided that I must be a bad person. I must have done something to someone in my past that was so terrible, and I now had karma knocking on my door.

But it was actually Lanie knocking on my door. I walked over, unlocked it, and held the door open an inch while peeking out.

“Oh, Bec, want some company? I can come in and hang for a while,” she said. She had a bag of food in her hand, and it actually made my stomach rumble. Opening the door wider, she walked in behind me as I climbed back on my bed.

“How did you even know I was up here? You don’t live here anymore,” I scoffed. Probably bitchier than I needed to be; she had her own shit she was dealing with.

“I stopped by last night to see you, but you didn’t answer your door. Ava told me you’ve been up here since early yesterday.” She climbed on the bed with me and held out the bag like a peace offering. “It’s a Fabulous Fred’s sandwich, two of them. Thought we could eat together.”

I grabbed the bag and tore into it, suddenly famished. The girl even thought to bring me a Diet Coke and some BBQ chips, both my favorites.

“Thank you,” I said meekly, afraid my earlier comment may have angered her. But she snuggled closer to me, taking her sandwich from the bag, and began eating in silence.

She was good like that. Knowing at that moment talking was not high on my list of priorities. We ate. Then we talked a little about her moving some of her stuff over to Xander’s and how I would help her later that day with some of it. We chit chatted about our classes and how much homework we were getting.

And we ignored the devastation and drama in both our lives.

But then we really had nothing left to say.

And the silence in the room became deafeningly loud.

I felt her eyes on me.

“Bec,” she said. “I talked to Ty.”

“Fuck, I forgot you were doing that,” I told her. I dropped my face into my hands, not wanting to face anymore of my life.

“Isn’t that what this is all about? Why you’ve been up here in your room?” she asked.

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