Page 71 of Under Pink Skies

“But my father makes a good point,. I’ll give him that. We know nothing about each other, except for what we enjoyed when we were seventeen. What was true when we were teenagers isn’t true now. Other than a few funny stories, I have no idea what you did during the last five years.”

Her words landed like a physical blow to my chest. Had the last six weeks meant nothing to her?

“There hasn’t been anyone else, Abbie,” I said, exasperated. “I was never interested in having that kind of physical relationship with anyone else but you. I know it might be hard for you to trust my words, but ask Kameron, or Lucas, or anyone I served with. They’ll tell you that as much as I drank and partied, I never went home with another woman.Never.”

Abbie considered this.

“I’m sorry,” she said, tears spilling out from her eyes. “I didn’t mean to attack you like that. I think . . . I think I need to be alone now. Lucas was right. This is too much.”

“Lucas? What did he say to you?”

Freaking Lucas. I would kill him for this. For planting that seed of doubt in Abbie’s mind, making her think she had to deal with her father on her own.

“It doesn’t matter,” Abbie said.

“What? Abbie, don’t push me out.”

“I just need some space. Look around Connor, for God’s sake,” Abbie said, gesturing wildly to the hospital corridor. “I can’t have you running around getting me coffee and food and letting me cry on your shoulder when my focus needs to be here. I need tofixthis, and I can’t do that if I’m distracted. I can’t do this with you right now.”

My heart beat wildly in my chest as panic threatened to pull me under.

My thoughts kept stopping and starting, like an old truck engine trying to turn over and failing. A faint mechanical buzz filled my ears as I tried to make sense of Abbie’s words. I tried to reconcile the distant person in front of me with the woman who had bared her heart to me just that morning.

“You’re breaking up with me?” I asked incredulously. “What is this, some terrible romance movie? That’s not how things go.”

“We aren’t dating, Connor,” Abbie snapped, and my insides twisted. “It’s not a break up because we never put a label on this.”

She gestured flippantly between the two of us, and awareness slammed into me as I realized what she was doing. I could see her rebuilding those walls, brick by brick. The walls I’d spent the last month and a half tearing down were now back in place, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. I would have to wait her out. I had been prepared for this possibility since the minute I stepped foot in Watford again.

But I hadn’t expected it to physically hurt like this. I was no stranger to pain. Between Ellis and the Marine Corps, I’d experienced my fair share of ass kicking. But the pain that now radiated from my chest was all consuming. There was no comparison. Purely physical pain, I could handle. This pain, born from having someone you love push you out of their life, was something wholly different.

“I need space. Please give me that.”

“Abbie,” I said, slightly shell-shocked.

“I was an idiot for this,” Abbie said, fiddling nervously with her hair. I wanted her to look at me. I wanted her to remember that despite everything we’d been through, she couldn’t pawn me off that easily now. “My father might be an asshole going through withdrawal, but he’s not wrong. We’ve been moving way too fast. And Lucas—he was right. I’m needed here. My focus has to be here. I just can’t right now. Ican’t.”

I knew in that moment this went far deeper than our history. This was about the story Abbie had woven in her mind about the men in her life and how much she mattered to them.

My hands went limp at my sides as I let out a long, low sigh.

“Call me when you’re ready to talk,” I said, trying to keep my tone light, even while my chest cracked down the middle.

I had promised her I would walk away from this, from us, if she said the word. I expected her to shut me out in those early weeks, but I hadn’t expected it to come now, when were so close to having it all.

But I was a man of my word. On this, I wouldn’t push her.

Abbie said nothing as she wrapped her arms around her torso and turned away from me. I let my fingers hang loose at my sides, flexing and unflexing my fists the entire way out to my truck.

I wrenched open the driver’s side door and climbed in, slamming the door shut with more force than necessary. Lucy groaned in protest, and I ran my hands over the steering wheel in a soothing movement.

I stared at the neon lights of the hospital sign, trying to figure out how two days ago I had everything I could ever want, and now it had all gone to crap.

Chapter 27

Connor

Drivingbacktothecabin in Watford was a blur.

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