Page 80 of The Truth About Love

I can’t have this conversation with him. Not now, not ever. But it breaks my heart that he thinks I never loved him.

“I loved you more than anything.”

“Then why did you leave?”

I shake my head, pain slicing through me. I don’t want to remember the day I ended things, the way my heart splintered as I heard the nurse outside my room tell him he wasn’t allowed to visit me anymore. I don’t want to remember the sound of his voice as he called out to me through the door in confusion or the sound of his feet scuffing the floor as security carried him out.

I grip my heart.

This is too much.

“I can’t talk about this with you.”

My eyes are still locked on the scene outside the window, but the sunset has long given way to darkness.

“Bullshit,” he snaps, angry now.

But still, I say nothing.

“You broke my heart, Summer-Raine,” he growls, coming to stand in front of me and forcing me to meet his eyes. “You ripped it straight out of my chest and you never even told me why. I mourned our relationship foryears.So youwilltalk to me about this, or are you the same coward now as you were back then?”

Until now, I’ve only seen him angry once, on the night I tried to manipulate him into hurting me. But that was nothing compared to the rage I see on his face now. The grief, the anguish, the sheer, unadulterated fury. His eyes blaze with it all. It makes him look like a different man altogether.

“You didn’t even have the courage to break up with me yourself,” he says, shaking his head as he drags a calloused palm down his face.

“I couldn’t,” I say, the words coming out strangled and breathless.

He scoffs. “More bullshit.”

Tears burn in my eyes and I don’t even try to blink them away. “I couldn’t,” I suck in a deep breath, “because I knew that if I saw you, I wouldn’t have been able to do it.”

Auden blanches, his nostrils flaring as his hands curl into fists at his sides. His stance may be aggressive, but I know he’d never hurt me. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

But I just shake my head. I’ve already said too much.

I stand up and push past him, desperate to put distance between us. But a large hand closes around my wrist. The touch of his skin on mine sends electricity humming through me and renders me paralysed.

“You’re not going anywhere, Summer-Raine,” he warns. “Not until we’ve had this conversation. I know how much you love running away from me, but I don’t give a damn how hard it is for you right now, because I guarantee whatever discomfort you feel at having to answer my questions is nothing compared to the pain you put me through when you left without a word.”

And now he’s not the only one who’s angry.

Like a switch that’s been flicked, my eyes snap to his and the despair I was feeling just seconds ago morphs into white hot rage.

Fuck this.

“You think it didn’t fucking hurt me too? You think that doing what I did didn’t break my heart too? Jesus, Auden, I’ve ached for you every second of every day. Itkillsme that I hurt you, that I gave up our future, that I let you go.” He towers over me, his eyes ablaze with tortured fury, but I don’t look away. If he’s so damn desperate to have this conversation, then so fucking be it. “You really think that you’re the only one who wears the bruises from that day?”

He laughs. “Well, what the hell am I supposed to think?Youleftme,remember? I get that you blame me for getting hurt that day. If I hadn’t have called out your name, you’d never have fallen like you did, butfuck,did I not at least deserve a conversation? I thought we loved each other enough to get through anything, but I obviously couldn’t have been more wrong given how easy it was for you to leave me.”

His words destroy me.

He’s spent all this time thinking I blamed him for what happened on those cliffs?

“You’ve got it all wrong.” I shake my head. “I didn’t leave you, Auden. I set you free.”

He freezes.

“Say that again.”

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