Page 69 of Crocodile Tears
“Oh, spare me,” she gritted out. “I don’t care if you were elbows deep in pussy for the last decade, you don’t justaccidentally fuck your best friends’ archenemy. You did it for a reason, why?”
“Because I missed you!” I erupted. “And I thought I could feel something about her as a substitute since you never answered my messages and cut me out of your life. I wanted to feel something like what I felt for you, and it was immediately clear to me how stupid that was, and that was it. I never talked to her again. I?—”
“You fucked her becauseyou missed me?” Dove seethed. “You’ve got to be kidding me. And the photos?”
“Lynx called the paps.”
“Of course she did,” Dove said with a bitter laugh. “I could’ve told you that she’d do that. She’s been chasing fame her entire life. You should’ve known better.”
“I got Cody to pay them off to kill the story,” I offered. “I didn’t think it would pop up again. I’m sorry.”
“I forgive you,” she muttered.
I reared my head back. “What? Really?” I was prepared for a long punishment and many acts of penance, not her instant forgiveness.
“Yeah,” she murmured, wiping under her eyes. “I mean, I’m still pissed about it, but we all did some really dumb shit when we were younger. And the Madigans are total manipulative snakes.”
“Then why are you crying?” I reached for her, and she took another step away. “Dove, please. Why are you pulling away from me?”
“Because all of those articles are true.” A sob wracked through her. “In some small ways, they’re right. Him withher? All those comments.”
“You know better than to read the comments?—”
“I can’t live with the entire world hating me forever,” she cried. “Even if I don’t have social media or never go online, Ican’t deal with having every girl who’s ever fantasized about you wishing I weredead,threatening to hurt my family. I can’t travel the world with you always worrying that I’ve put them in danger just because I was too selfish to give you up.”
“I will keep them safe,” I pleaded. “I’ll hire a full-time security team. This place will be Fort Knox for as long as it needs to be. But this will all die down soon, you’ll see. The internet has a shorter memory than a goldfish.”
“Goldfishes’ memories aren’t actually that short,” she retorted, so stubborn she had to correct my animal facts even as she was crying.
I gave her a soft smile. “It will quiet down. I promise you.”
“But it will always be there,” she said. “And I can’t be that person for you. You know I don’t want to live in a spotlight. I don’t know if I can survive all that comes with it.”
“I’ll quit acting,” I announced, carrying on even as Dove shook her head. “I just got everything I ever wanted and I’m not giving it up. I’ll quit today. Consider me retired.”
“No. You can’t?—”
“Dove, please,” I begged. “I don’t care about anything as much as I care about being with you.”
“I’m not going to ruin your career.” Her voice cracked. “You’ve got songs to write. The world deserves your music, Deacon. It’s your calling, your passion. I know you want that, and I won’t be the one to take it from you. You are made for this life.”
“I’m made for you.” The words caught in my throat as my eyes began to well. “I love you more than any of it, Dove. I want this more. Please, I love you.”
“You can’t love me anymore,” she replied definitively, her words a knife to my heart.As if it were a switch I could just flip.“It will only hurt us both in the end, more than it already has. I’m taking myself out of this equation.”
“You’re pulling away from me before I can let you down again. But I promise I won’t,” I vowed. “I won’t move on from this, from us, please. Don’t do this.”
I grabbed her, and for one split second I thought she’d change her mind as she lifted on her toes and kissed me. Salty tears coated our lips, and I tried to silently tell her all the things I felt, all the memories only she and I shared, all the dreams I knew we still shared together too.
But when she lowered back down, she choked out, “Please don’t follow me.” She took another step. “Goodbye, Deacon.”
I saw my heart rip in two as she walked away, half of my soul going after her, half staying put. I watched as the ghost of me followed her and took her hand and we wandered off into a life of love, marriage, a family one day, a quieter life. I’d write the music that spoke to the deepest parts of me, and she’d save the world one endangered species at a time. I felt in my bones what it would be like to live that life more viscerally than I felt my feet on the ground now, and I watched as that future flickered away, out of sight.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Deacon
I holed up in my apartment, not answering calls or responding to messages for a week . . . not that that meant I was entirely unreachable. Luca had his own key, and I’d suspiciously find the liquor cabinet restocked and that my piles of laundry had disappeared when I woke up each morning. I didn’t like it. I would’ve preferred the squalor around me to reflect the dimness in my heart.
