Page 112 of Landon & Shay: Part Two

My eyes were swollen from spending the previous night crying into my pillow. I knew there was no way he could come back from what he’d done, from the way he’d betrayed me and my words. Still, I wanted to see what he was going to say.

“Go ahead. Try.”

He stuffed his hands into his pockets and rounded his shoulders forward. “Sarah must’ve stolen the script from my trailer while I was doing a scene. It was the only way she could’ve gotten it. After I told her to piss off the other day, she must’ve felt as if she needed to get revenge on me or something. So, she took something from me in order to hurt you.”

“I knew that already,” I said.

He looked up to me with hope in his eyes. “You did?”

“Yes. After working with Sarah for a while, I learned what kind of person she was. I’m not surprised by that at all. What I am surprised at is the fact that you had my script in the first place.”

His mouth parted to speak, but no words came out.

I nodded. “Exactly. You betrayed me.”

“No, Shay. It’s not like that. I wanted to try to help you after you got fired, but—”

“You didn’t believe I could figure something out on my own. I get it.”

“That’s not it at all. Of course, I believed you could find something. That’s why I changed my mind and decided to not show anyone your work. I took the script without thinking it through, and I made a huge mistake.”

“You took something that was mine without my permission. I can’t trust you anymore, Landon. I’ve dealt with enough liars in my life. I can’t do it again with you.”

“Shay…please…”

“You should go,” I said, placing my hands against the door. I began closing it, closing him out of my life, because it was the only thing I could think to do. This was my own fault, truly. I let someone back into my life who’d hurt me in the past. I didn’t understand why I’d expected some different kind of results.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

“Please, Shay. We can figure this out. I know there’s a way we can work around this. We’ve been through so much together. We can’t let this break us,” he pleaded, his eyes filled with emotions.

“Exactly, Landon. We’ve been through so much, and I’m tired. I don’t want to do this game where every few years I get disappointed and hurt. I don’t want to do this anymore.”

“But I love you,” he whispered, his voice soaked in pain. “I love you so fucking much, Shay. And we were so close. We were so damn close to our forever.”

“Maybe forever was just a dream. Not something that would ever be our reality.”

“You don’t mean that. I know you, and you know me. You know we’re supposed to be together. We’ve been through fucking wars, Shay. Don’t let this put an end to us. Don’t close me out.”

I had to close him out. It was the only way we’d put an end to the painful story that we’d been living for way too long. It started when we were teenagers, and it grew too big. It was now time to close our novel. It was time to write our final words.

“I’m sorry, Landon. This is it. We’re over.”

I shut my door and listened to him hammer on it from the other side, but I couldn’t reopen it. I couldn’t let him back in, no matter how much my heart longed for his love.

* * *

“You’re afraid of love,”Mima explained at Sunday dinner after hearing about the fallout between Landon and me. She was so concrete in her statement, as if she didn’t see the flaws of her words.

I shook my head, shocked by my grandmother’s comment. Did she not hear how Landon betrayed me? How he took my work without my permission and allowed it to fall into the wrong hands?

What did that have to do with me being afraid of love?

“That has nothing to do with this issue,” I said. “My love for Landon has nothing to do with me breaking things off with him. He betrayed me.”

Just like every other man in my life. That was what men did—they let women down.

“No. He made a mistake, and you are using that mistake as a reason to run. Truth is, you would’ve found any slip-up he made and used it as an excuse to run the other way, because you are afraid of love.”

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