Page 63 of Unholy Confessions
Chapter 30
Montgomery
I miss him. Not in the ways I thought I would. I thought I'd miss his strength beside me in crowds, the way he'd sling his arm around my neck and hold me close. But that's not actually what's hurting more than anything. It's the fact I can't call him, can't hear his voice, or send him a random text, much less get one in the middle of the night from him.
It's almost like he's a missing person and no one knows where to look for him.
The worst part is the silence. RJ and I have never gone more than a few hours without talking since we met three years ago. Even during our worst fights, even when we were screaming at each other until we were hoarse, we'd still text goodnight. Now there's just this echoing void where his voice used to be, where his laugh used to fill all the empty spaces in my chest.
I catch myself reaching for my phone a hundred times a day, muscle memory making me want to share every stupid little thing with him. The Reel I saw on social media with the cute dog. The way someone cut me off in traffic. Me seeing an interview with him from a couple months ago where he talked about me. The dream I had about us last night that was so vivid I woke up reaching for him, only to find cold sheets and the devastating reality that he's not here.
He's not anywhere I can reach him.
"Earth to Montgomery," Hayden snaps his fingers at me to get my attention. "It's your turn to present where you want the next scene in the TV script."
I blink, realizing I've been staring at the conference room table for God knows how long, lost in the maze of my own grief. Everyone's looking at me with varying degrees of concern and impatience, and I feel heat creep up my neck. We've reserved the conference room in the library.
I cut my eyes over to Hayden, giving him a glare. There have been times the past few weeks where I've been thankful for him. He's taken me out a few times, just to get my mind off of things – dinners that stretched too late, movies where I cried in the dark and pretended it was because of the plot, long drives where we talked about everything except the one person I can't stop thinking about. But there are others, like right now, when he doesn't seem to understand what I'm going through. When he looks at me like I should be over this by now, like RJ's absence should be something I can just compartmentalize and move past.
"Yeah," I clear my throat, trying to pull myself together. "So if we want to stay in line with the romance, Malachi is going to have to give Erin a grand gesture."
"Oh yeah, I totally agree," Skylar squeals, her eyes bright with the kind of excitement I remember feeling once upon a time. "What are you thinking?"
Glancing at the straw paper on our table, from someone's drink they brought in, I think of RJ, and my chin begins to quiver despite my best efforts to keep it together. The memory hits me like a freight train, so sudden and vivid it steals my breath.
"Paper rings," I whisper, the words barely audible.
But I can see it so clearly. RJ's hands, those beautiful, long-fingered hands that could coax magic from a guitar, shaking as he carefully twisted a straw wrapper around my ring finger.
"He takes his straw paper and wraps it around her ring finger, promising he'll propose one day with a real ring," I continue, my voice stronger now even as my heart is crumbling.
"Oh my God," Sarah practically swoons. "I love that."
I do too, and no one knows why. No one knows that I have a jewelry box full of paper rings at home, each one carefully preserved like they're made of diamonds. No one knows that I spent three hours last night making myself a new one, crying into a bottle of wine and missing him so desperately I thought I might die from it.
The meeting continues around me, voices fading as I spin the latest paper ring on my finger – the one I made in my kitchen at 2 AM when the silence got too loud and I needed something, anything, that connected me to him. The paper is soft now from me twisting it nervously, worn thin in places where my anxiety has gotten the better of me.
Everyone's talking about love scenes and romantic gestures and happy endings while I'm drowning in the absence of the only love that's ever mattered. They're discussing long term effects for a scene that's going to be a beautiful recreation of some of the most intimate moments of my life, and I have to sit here and pretend my heart isn't bleeding all over the conference room table.
"We'll need to write it believably," Skylar says, making notes. "It needs to feel authentic, spontaneous."
Authentic. The word makes me want to laugh, but I'm afraid if I start, I'll never stop. Nothing about any of this feels authentic anymore. I'm playing a role now, the role of the girl who's moving on, the girl who's fine, the girl who doesn't wake up every morning hoping today will be the day she hears from him.
"Montgomery has good instincts for this stuff," Hayden says, and I can hear something in his voice that makes my stomach clench. "She really understands the emotional beats."
I understand them because I'm living them. I understand them because every romantic gesture we write for these fictional characters is something I'm desperate to have again with the man who's locked away somewhere I can't reach.
"That's perfect," Sarah says. "Do you wanna write this one?" I don't know how she's not seen me being mentioned in the fucking gossip threads everywhere, but she doesn't seem to be on the internet as much as everyone else is.
My chest tightens. I'll have to write about the love I'm terrified I'll never have again, write someone else getting their happy ending while mine is locked away in a facility whose name I don't even know how to pronounce. I'll have to take these characters through the motions of falling in love while I'm dying from the inside out.
As everyone starts packing up, discussing where we're going from here, Hayden lingers beside me. I know what's coming before he even opens his mouth. The question that's been haunting me for weeks, the one that makes me want to scream every time I hear it.
"How's RJ doing?" he asks, his voice is carefully neutral, but I can hear the edge underneath. The frustration. The jealousy, maybe.
The words slice through me like glass, ripping me open. "You know I haven't been able to talk to him yet," I choke out, my voice cracking despite my best efforts. "And I don't understand why you keep bringing it up when you know it's killing me."
Every time someone mentions his name, it's like someone's pressing on a bruise that never heals. I wake up reaching for him, fall asleep crying for him, and spend every day in between pretending I'm not falling apart.I've worn out the videos on my phone from watching them over and over, desperate for any piece of him I can hold onto.
