Page 64 of Come Back to Me

“Listen, I’m sure you’re a great guy, and I appreciate the drink, but I literally had my heart broken less than twenty-four hours ago. So, I’m really not about making small talk with strangers in a bar right now. Can you appreciate that?”

Blake stares at me for about thirty seconds before saying, “Well, how about some revenge fucking then, sans conversation? That might make you feel better.”

Jesus, dude. Really?

What the actual hell is wrong with men, I wonder, as I throw down a five for the bartender. I give Blake a disgusted look, then walk away.

Once I’m back in my hotel room, deadbolt secured, of course, in case “Revenge Fucking Blake” tries to follow me back. I decide to make a dent in my “to be read” list on my e-reader. Maybe I’ll find a good paranormal romance where the men are vampires or werewolves—something less terrifying than regular men.

JACK

I pace back and forth across my living room floor, likely wearing a hole in the area rug. It’s been a full twenty-four hours since I’ve talked to Annie. She won’t answer my texts, and my calls have all gone straight to voicemail.

I’m so desperate to reach her I finally decide to brave it and reach out to Janie, knowing I’m likely to catch hell from her. I call and brace myself.

“What?” she answers, saying nothing else.

Okay, she’s set the tone. Now I know what to expect.

“Janie, it’s Jack. I need?—”

“I know who this is, asshat. I have caller ID. And I don’t give a rat’s ass what you need right now. You hurt my friend,” she hisses.

“Please, Janie. Just tell her to answer my calls. Last night… it’s not what she thinks. I didn’t do anything…” I say, practically begging her to listen to me.

“Jesus, Jack. Do you really think this is all just about last night? You didn’t do anything? Seriously? You’ve been treating her like shit for weeks now, and then she comes to the bar to help you, and finds you with another woman,” she spits out at me.

“I know. Believe me, I know,” I offer.

“No, I don’t think you do know, Jack. Do you know how much it hurt her when you wouldn’t open up to her? When you left her at your parents’ house without telling her you were leaving? When you snapped at her the morning after she picked your drunk ass up at the bar? Do you?” she asks, full on yelling at me now.

“Janie—” I start, but she’s not done yet.

“And then you stopped staying over and stopped coming to the ER on squad runs. You made her love you and then you left her, Jack. You left her alone. You made her cry. A lot.”

“God, Janie. I’m so sorry, I can’t even tell you. I love her. I need a chance to make this right.”

She doesn’t say anything for so long that I wonder if the call dropped.

“I’m sorry, Jack, but I’m not sure you can make it right. You didn’t just break her heart, you broke her spirit.” She’s not yelling anymore and the resigned tone in her voice is much, much worse.

I hang up with Janie and I can’t do anything but sit andlet the emotions of the last two weeks slam into me. Emotions I’ve not been able to put into words to share with the one person who loved me enough to help me bear them.

Guilt. Anger. Blame. Fear. Sadness. Failure. Grief. Loneliness. They come fast and hard, hitting me right in the chest. Only this time, they aren’t just because of losing Teddy. They’re also here because of losing Annie. Her words from last night play back in my mind. Words I refused to acknowledge the meaning of until now.

It’s the last words from her beautiful mouth that sting the most. “I’m calling it,” she’d said.

There’s no mistaking what those words mean in our line of work. You “call it” when someone, or in this case, something, is dead. With no chance of being revived. In Annie’s eyes, our relationship is dead.

I’ve made the woman I love with everything in me give up on our relationship. It hits me so hard that a sob of grief rips from my lips and I just want to drown it like I’ve been trying to do with the pain over losing Teddy.

I don’t think I can survive losing them both. I can’t face it, can’t deal with it. I walk to the bar in my dining room and grab the half empty bottle of whiskey and a glass, ready to push away my pain, once again.

Just as I’m about to pour, out of the corner of my eye I catch a glimpse of the white envelope sitting on my desk. I freeze.

I’m filled with this sense, thiscertainty, that what I do in these next few minutes will have a profound impact on what kind of man I become moving forward. For better or for worse.

It hurts so much that everything in me wants the whiskey. I want to pour it and forget, at least for tonight. But then I see her face in my mind. Her face when she laughs, when shesleeps, when she dances. Her face when she read my letter the night I told her I loved her.

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