Page 45 of I See Red

“It’s not that Iwon’tfight for you. I came to termsyears ago thatI wasn’t allowed to. You have made that very fucking clear with not only your actions but your chessboard fucking words. I could stand before you right now completely fucking broken and tell you all the things you crave to hear from me, but it won’t fucking matter—I know it just as do you, so don’t patronize me, don’t you fuckingdareput this all on me.”

“Mkkk. Patronize, what a fucking word coming from you. That’s all you’ve ever done; all the missed calls left never returned? Or maybe let’s talk about the text messages left on read. The endless apologies for leaving me constantly dangling, leading to all the times we stopped talking. Your apologies are so played out with zero follow-through after them. Let’s not fucking act like you are a fucking saint.”

“Your right, I fuck up, and my actions don’t always match my words Ivy. I’m a fucked up man with issues I don’t know how to always fix. I’m selfish at times, most of the time, and you deserve so much more. You think I don’t know that? But I do know my fucking limits, our limits, and you saying I won’t fight for you is bullshit. I can’t fight for someone who isn’t ever going to let me win. Your rule, Your game, Your move. We are all just fucking pieces on the board.”

“Oh, you think you fucking know me? You think you know how I’d react if you fucking fought for me? Okay, T. Just walk out the door, go ahead. I’m giving you your fucking out. Consider yourself left on read.”

“Ivy, yes, I fucking know because I have watched you play the same fucking game I have all these years. You want me to tell you I love you more than myself? Well, I fucking do. I wish every daythat you would love yourself as much as I love you, but the truth is I could stand in front of you right now and tell you to choose me like you want me to choose you, but you and I both know you will never leave Liam. You will never give up the stability you have. It’s the entire fucking reason you killed Red. Your love for me, and her love for me, haunts you, and you want me to choose you, but I have, and I always did. I’m not going to fucking give you what you want when we both know you will never reciprocate it. We can’t have each other the way we crave. We can’t ride off in the goddamn sunset and build a life together because if I ask you to choose me, I’m asking you to give him up, and I would never fucking ask you to do something I know you can’t. Something that would further break you. You don’t want me to fight for you. You want to know I will if you asked, and I may not be fucking perfect, but God dammit Ivy, I have never demanded something of you I know you can’t give. It’s a game, one I know how to play, and I choose not to because the damage this game brings lands us exactly where we are right now, ripping what we have had apart, and that’s the last fucking thing I ever wanted. You think I haven’t fought for you, but the truth, Amor, is having you the way I do was always better than never having you at all, and if you think that makes me a bitch, then I’m a fucking bitch, Ivy Sage Rutledge. I’m a broken, reckless bitch of a man who calculated the pros and cons and came to terms with the fact that having you in an imperfect way was better than not having you at all. I never fought for you because you told me not to every step of the goddamn way. You have reminded me every moment what asking that would bring, so I fucking made my own choice. I cherished what you could give. I did as you asked, and I’d do it again to experience the last year we’ve had.All the yearswe’ve had, from the moment I sat next to you on that bus, to the moment I gave you that smiley face ring, all the way up to this moment, and I’d relive it all because Ifucking love you. I love you so much it hurts. I chose you, and I’d choose you again and again; you just have tofuckinglet me. Until then, you don’t get to scold me for doing what you’ve asked,no, what you’vedemandedof me all these years.”

His words strike a nerve, and in an instant, I want to crawl into a hole and die. I’ve always had the words, and I’m wordless in this heated moment, unsure of anything except what needs to be done. He’s not wrong. I have never wanted him to force me to make a choice. To choose is not something I am sure I could ever do. If I was forced to, he’s probably right, I would choose Liam. The game I am playing has turned on me, and I suddenly want off this warped merry-go-round now. Hearing his words feels good and horrible all in the same. To see there is a fight in him, a desire in him to have me and love me, is all I’ve truly sought from him, but he’s right. I am being selfish, and asking him to do that is unfair, for the pendulum would never swing in his favor, or maybe it would. I don’t think I could ever choose. I should tell him that, but to do such gives him power; it would mean giving up the game.I would never choose Liam over him, nor would I choose him over Liam.My love is forever stuck in a purgatory state of the unknown, and I just wish I could have both. Why does shared custody only apply to children? Fuck, I’ve made a mess. He’s so fucking right; he can’t choose me. It’s always been my choice, and I need to let him go. My love is divided, and my boundaries are unfair. But his words feed my tattered soul, piecing it back just a little hearing them.

“I never needed you to choose me, just to know you would, and you’re right. That’s so unfair, which is why we can’t continue this any further. We are toxic to ourselves and those in our lives. You’ve given me what I asked, you’ve expressed yourself for the first time without reserve, and I fucking thank you for that. We both know what comes next: me telling you to leave,you agree with me, and we go our separate ways. I am sorry I am such a fucking mess. I am sorry for taking Red from you, but I will never apologize for forcing you to fucking tell me your true thoughts. I will cherish them forever, but you are right, T. I want the knowledge and the power, not the reality it brings.”

I ache as I watch him break with my half-truths because I do want him, and I want a life with him. I want to tell him I feel all the things he just said, but I can’t. I just fucking can’t, with no true idea as to why except fear.

“Ivy, we can continue to have both. We made that pact to never ask the other to choose years ago. Let’s just erase this all and continue how we were. Was it really so bad, Amor? Fuck Red, it has always been you and I that matters the most. I cannot lose you too.”

“We can’t, T, because no matter how much I never want you to ask me to choose, I will always be searching for you to choose me and mad at you when you don’t, regardless of our reality. I crave you desperately, in some of the most reckless ways.”

“Promise me it’s not forever; promise me you’ll at least reconsider.”

“I can’t promise anything. I don’t know our future any more than nine-year-old me knew mine when I stood in this building as your girlfriend all those years ago. But I can promise you I will love you from a distance and in silence forever, but for now and the foreseeable future, we cannot communicate anymore. I need time. I need to heal and process this all. I need to be okay with what became of us and find happiness in all I’ve created with him. I’m sorry.”

His cold hands that I fucking love hug my face, his lips leaning into mine. Making a split-minute decision, I pull away. I know if I let him kiss me, I’ll need more, and this cycle must end. “I can’t even have a kiss?”

“You know we can never stop at that; I love you, T.”

“I love you too, Ivy Sage Rutledge. I truly hope you forgive all those who harmed you, not because they deserve it but because you do. Maybe then you can finally forgive yourself and see in you what Liam and I have since the day we met you. For what it’s worth, this building didn’t make you. You made you. There will come a time when you learn to love what happened to you, andthenI know you will learn to love who it made of you. From where I stand, she’s the kindest, strongest, purest woman ever to walk across these floors that the world doesn’t deserve. You will be okay; you always are, but please stop killing people. You were perfect.”

His words sharp as ice, freezing my soul, the pressure creating new cracks. The weight they carry in truth is haunting but hopeful. He’s right. I need to learn to love my pain and find the beauty in my wreckage. It’s the only way. I thought I always had, in some magnitude, but that’s the beauty in perception, it’s built by many layers. There are three ways to look at something, from your point of view, theirs, and the world’s. As far as my soul is concerned, I need to find a new perspective if I have any hope of finding peace.

“Forever and through.”

“Take care of yourself, my star-crossed lover.”

Time stands still, watching him dislodge from my presence, the door latching behind him loudly. I wait until his engine revs, the RPMs fading off into the distance, merely faint noises. Falling to my knees, my hands claw at my clothes, only the walls of my past and the torture of my present now swarm me. Letting out years of pent-up aggression, demonic screams fill the room, traveling to all the others in this old metal tombstone. I need to get high; I need to be fucked. Unapologetically, without bond or emotion, and that’s exactly what I plan to fucking do. Peace will have to wait.

Ivy:Can I come over?

Unknown:I thought you’d never ask, baby girl. I’m here; yous know the code.

The Devil You Know.

“Some believe idle hands are the devil’s playground. I believe idle thoughts are. The devil’s had his hands on me my entire life, and for tonight, I am his to ruin.”

—Ivy

I’ve sold myself short my entire life when it comes to love; to pretend I’ve ever accomplished it would be a complete lie. Loving a ghost and loving the same physical human day in and out are two completely different things that require entirely different wheelhouses of honesty and vulnerability. Like I said—perception. Liam can’t love me truly with only a fourth of the truths of the woman he lays with at night. Love is honest. I am not. I’ve played the role, and as far as those around me are concerned, I have it all, but what is owning the city truly worth without earth-shattering love to come home to every night? Love that’s so raw; there are no corners of the other hidden. The digits in my accounts are null when I earned them through loneliness,lies, and rage, never allowing myself to authentically be me. Everything I own was derived from pain, heartache, and mental torture. I wish it was built on love, happiness, and smiles, but there’s only ever been one smiley face always smiling back at me regardless of who I am, and it sits at the bottom of my jewelry box. We all want what we can’t have, and there is no pot of gold at the end of the fucking rainbow after the storm, but there is always a man willing to fill the voids within you.

Fuck

Walking away from Tayden is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. The tremors still cascading through my body speak that truth deep to my core, but it was a necessary move if I’m ever going to have a fucking chance at having something real, whether that’s with Liam or someone else. Like he’s always told me,feed the desire, never love it.Loving Tayden was never a mistake, but loving something unattainable was. Loving him without the ability to ever have him is mental torture, a way to keep myself in the past and never allow myself a future. He was once my savior; now, he’s become my way of torturing myself and chaining myself to the past. Tonight, I need to go back to my roots, back to what works. My hunger to be fed races through my mind as I stand in front of the elevator, only a few floors separating me from it. Liam’s words are the last to replay, granting me the permission I crave right here in my destitute. Letting out a long breath in an attempt to recalibrate myself, I enter the elevator, my finger forcing the P on the top of the panel to illuminate, alerting him to my presence, taking away my will to walk away and into Liam’s arms. Where I should be, but I’m fucked up. That button seals my fate, at least for tonight. Stripping my clothes down, throwing them off to the side. I stand here barefoot with nothing but maroon lace touching my forbidden skin. The elevator dings, forcing the doors to part. I’ve reached my destination, and in mere seconds, the fix I’ve beenneeding will stand before me. My heart begins to race, flutters like shockwaves form deep in the pit of my stomach. Raising my head up, I find him in my view with two flutes of champagne, one in each hand. His muscles are relaxed but sculpted. There’s something about a man with massive traps and a chiseled jawline that just fucking sends me. My eyes begin the downward inspection of his gray sweatpants hugging just below his V, revealing my only true business here tonight.His cock.

My words are still as he begins his journey toward me. My breath quickens with each step he takes. A single tear breaks from my grasp as his shoulder brushes the door, steadying himself against it, holding it open. Extending his arm out, the champagne now in grasp, I take it. His eyes narrow, examining my mental state, taking in a deep breath, looking for his words.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks.

“If I had wanted to, I would have called,” my tone stern. I’m sure the elevator can hear the beats of our hearts loud and clear. I shoot back the entirety of the bubbles in my hand before slamming it to the ground, the glass crashing as loud and reckless as I when my desire tumbles out.

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