Page 80 of The Worst Kind of Promise
“No. You’re not villainizing me,” she snarls, pointing her finger at me. “You had no right to assume how I felt. You had no right to do that without telling me.”
I find myself pushing my chest into the tip of her fingernail, glaring down at her from above, a growl starting deep in my belly and racing up the channel of my throat. “I didn’t realize I needed yourpermissionto beat up the man who raped you.”
“Oh my God. There you go! Making me seem likeI’mthe irrational one for not wanting you to beat someone up.”
“I just don’t understand why you’re so mad at me!” I shout, refusing to back down even as her finger presses into my pectorals, even as I witness the most heartbreaking expression on her face. My heart feels like it’s being macerated by a mortar and pestle. That trust we’ve built, nursed—all gone within one stupid, impulsive decision.
“I’m mad at you because you did it for you, not for me! If it was for me, you would’ve respected my wishes!” She sweeps her finger into the ball of her fist, pounding it against my sternum.
Hit.
“How am I supposed to trust you? I was reluctant to tell you in the first place because I didn’t know what you’d do.”
Wince.
“You say you care about me, but then you go behind my back. You say you want to be with me, but you’ve made me cry more than anyone else has!”
Hit.
Wince.
A rhythm that doesn’t cease, that rumbles under my feet and splits into a fault line, threatens to swallow me underground. Though as much as her punches sting, they’re nowhere near as painful as her words.
My uninjured hand reflexively shoots out to grab her arm, but I keep my grip soft around her wrist. She reels backward—not enough to extricate herself—and she stares into my eyes from beneath those damp lashes, her chest rising and falling in frame-shaking breaths.
My knees are barely holding me up at this point. “You think I like making you cry, Faye? It’s the worst feeling in the world. That fight we had at the party was one of the worst days of my life.”
I don’t like revisiting that day. And now here we are, weeks later, and I’m breaking her heart all over again when I promised I wouldn’t.
“Then why do you keep doing it?” she spits, ripping her arm from my fingers. “You say I matter to you, you say…”
I don’t hear the rest of her sentence. I don’t hear anything over the bashing of my heart and the internal voices laughing at me from the dark corners of my mind.
She keeps saying that I don’t care about her. She keeps saying things that aren’t true. Why does she keep saying that?
There are cinder weights tied to my feet, pulling me deeper into the ocean, down far enough that I can no longer see the cerulean patch of sky above me. All that exists is the darkness closing around me like giant tentacles.
“Stop!” I don’t register how loud my voice is, how it reverberates off the walls. All I register is the agony bisecting the two halves of my barely beating heart, leaving behind a hole that only Faye can occupy.
And sheflinches. She fucking flinches.
I can hear the guys’ voices loudening down the hallway, overlapping with one another in worried hushes, and right as Haye forces the door open, Faye charges for the exit. The group parts down the middle to make way for her bolting body, and I pray that my strides are long enough to catch her, but the goddamn roadblock in the doorway slows me down. Everyone’s asking me questions I don’t have time to answer.
I reach the living room—with the rest of the team on my heels—right as I see her snatch something from the entryway table, and then she disappears into the dark of night.
30
HOW TO LOSE A GIRL IN ONE NIGHT
KIT
“Start talking. Now,” Hayes orders, embers of anger reflected in the aquamarine pits of his eyes.
If my heart wasn’t seconds away from bursting out of my chest, the shame would’ve jumpstarted it. “We got into a fight,” I say curtly, and no matter how furious I may be at the situation, the only person to blame right now is me.
Fulton peeks his head out of the door. “I don’t see her,” he relays.
Fuck! She could be anywhere right now. It’s midnight, it’s dark, and Riverside isn’t safe enough for her to be walking around alone at night. I don’t even know if she took her phone, shoes, a jacket, anything.
