Page 87 of Leah

“I’m glad he opened up to you.” I meant it, even though I had longed for the same thing once.

“Doesn’t it matter that he’s come so far?”

Of course it mattered. “I feel scorned, Rome, like…like I can’t take that step.”

“You’re not ready.”

I definitely was not.

“Leah, he has changed,” he stressed now. “He isn’t loose with the women. He’s lonely, and he’s tired, and he pined for you every single day.”

I shrugged, looking down at the floor. I couldn’t handle this. “I don’t want him to be hurting, or to be lonely—”

“Do you know how many nights I caught him wandering around, whispering, damning himself for letting you go, for not being able to change his past? I can't count the amount of times he muttered about turning back time.”

My eyes shut, and I felt the pressure behind them build.

I really didn’t want to hear this.

Didn’t he—or anybody—understand the toll a heartbreak had on a once hopeful soul?

“Just let me know anything else I have to do while I’m trapped in here,” I forced out brokenly.

He sighed at my dismissal, went quiet for several minutes, and then he moved on. He talked me through what to expect, how difficult my life might be the next few weeks, and all the while he spoke, I stared at Carter’s frame on the balcony.

He stood there, his back to me, staring down at the streets below.

His soul was calling out to me—

I wasn’t answering.

My heart shut itself away.

When the boys eventually left, Carter didn’t say another word to me. Didn’t even look at me.

I saw him one more time before his plane crash.

Twenty-Five

Leah

For some time I had been appointed a bodyguard; his name was Dave.

On the unlikely event I went out, Dave followed me everywhere. It didn’t matter what hour of the day it was, either. He must have lived in his car or something, which made little sense because he was a huge burly man that dressed impeccably in nice wrinkle-free dress shirts and khakis. I don’t know, maybe he had an ironer in his car because he was there whenever I needed him.

While he didn’t physically “guard” me, he did act as my personal maid. He fetched me my groceries, collected my mail, and grabbed me an Iced Cappuccino and a chocolate chip cookie every single morning.

The cookies always helped, especially as the news regurgitated the same story over and over again. Turning on the computer no longer became a joy for me. It was an absolute nightmare, consisting of pictures of Carter and me and never ending articles of what a cheater he was and how I “seduced” him.

Yeah, Leah the Seducer. That was me, alright.

Honestly, what the fuck?

I steered clear from the internet, to say the least. For the first time, it wasn’t even difficult to do. When Carter told me they lied, I guess I never realized the extent of how far they would go. It was like waking up one day and having someone tell you the colour blue was actually purple. A complete blatant lie, yet it must be true because it was in the media.

I hated it.

Then Melanie had to come home one day, clutching a magazine in her hands, and suddenly shit went from bad to worse. She approached me in the bedroom slowly, holding the magazine so tightly, her hands had gone white. She looked frightened, like she was nearing a Kodiak bear and I was on the verge of clawing her face off.

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