Page 103 of The Wreckage Of Us
She would never know how much I loved her.
How much I still loved her.
How much I always, always would.
Chapter 41
Brittany
I was still sitting on the cold kitchen floor when the front door slammed shut.
The sound echoed through the apartment like the final blow of a hammer driving the last nail into a coffin.
Our coffin.
I pressed my shaking hands to my chest, trying to catch my breath, but it felt like I was drowning — like the air had been sucked from the room, and I was left gasping for scraps.
This couldn’t be real.
He couldn’t have just walked out like that.
He couldn’t have just told me he never loved me. That he loved Sierra. That he was marrying her.
No.
No. No. No.
I let out a broken sob, curling forward until my forehead touched the cold tile. My body rocked as I cried, and the sound that ripped from my throat was something I didn’t recognize — animal, guttural, desperate.
How?
How had we gone from late-night whispers and soft kisses, from his arms around me as I fell asleep, to this?
I tried to remember the way he looked at me just the night before, his face buried in my neck, his voice trembling when he said my name like a prayer. I tried to remember the way his hands had gripped me like he was scared to let go.
It was all a lie?
I dragged myself upright, clutching the edge of the counter, the world swaying under my feet. My knees were still trembling as I stumbled to the bedroom, the room we had shared, the bed we had made love in, the bed where he had held me as if I was the only thing tethering him to this earth.
I dropped onto the mattress, burying my face into his pillow.
It still smelled like him.
And that broke me all over again.
I screamed into the pillow until my throat was raw, until the ache in my chest was unbearable. And when I had no strength left to scream, I lay there — staring at the ceiling, at the tiny cracks in the plaster, listening to the sound of my own shattered breathing.
My mind raced, flipping through every moment, every word, every look — searching, desperate to understand.
He waited.
He waited for me to tell him I loved him.
And then he destroyed me.
Why?
Why did he have to be so cruel?
