Page 65 of Frozen Hearts
I bark out a caustic laugh. “Right. I get it now.” I can’t even look at him, I’m so fucking angry. “I thought you were better than that, Logan. I really did.” I shake my head in disappointment.
“I dance on a goddamn stage,” I snap, reaching boiling point. “It’s exactly the same as if you went to see the ballet or a concert.”
He doesn’t even bother to argue with me, which somehow only cuts deeper. However, his lack of eye contact and derisive snort fire my easily triggered temper.
“I don’t do any of the extras,” I snap, confident that he’s more than aware of the seedier aspect of Lux. “But even if I did, there would be nothing at all to be ashamed of or disgusted by. It’s alright for you to stand there with your holier-than-thou morals and judge me, but you’ve never had to rummage in the couch cushions for spare change in order to afford something to eat that day. You aren’t the one reliant on the free food in the dining hall for sustenance.”
My temper escalates with every sentence out of my mouth, reaching a crescendo. “You haven’t lived my life. You don’t know the path that has led me here. You don’t know the courage it takes for me to get up there every night just so I can have money in my purse each week.”
Jamming my finger in his chest, I hiss, “And until you have any fucking idea about my life, you have no right to judge how I choose to live it. The decisions I make.”
Throughout my entire incensed speech, he has glared at a point in the wall behind my head, but as my chest rises and falls with haggard breaths, he glances down at the finger still jabbing him in the chest, before finally looking into my eyes.
“Doesn’t your scholarship cover food and accommodation? What can you possibly need money for that you couldn’t earn in a restaurant or cafe?”
“Scholarships don’t cover everything,” I seethe. “I still have expenses.”
His narrowed gaze bores into me, prodding, searching, seeking.
I’ve already broken down walls I hadn’t intended to. I refuse to give him any more than I already have.
Dropping his head, he cuts off our staring contest and releases a breath.
I wait on tenterhooks, unsure where we go from here. If he can get over himself, then this isn’t an insurmountable problem. I am disappointed in him. I honestly thought he was a better person than that, but I can equally appreciate he would have been taken by surprise when he saw me on Saturday night, so his freak-out is somewhat warranted.
Forcing the indignation out of my system, I soften my tone. “I’m sorry I lied to you, Logan. That was never my intention. I wish I’d known you would be there on Saturday so I could have told you, but this doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t change who I am. I’m still the same girl you know.”
The shaking of his head silences anything else I might have said as my airway closes over.
“I… can’t,” he sighs, still staring at the floor.
Can’t? What does that mean?
Taking a step toward the door, he repeats, “I can’t right now.” Hestillwon’t look at me, and the butterflies that usually take flight in my stomach in his presence drop like stones, an ache forming in my chest. “This. Us. It shouldn’t have happened. It was a mistake. I appreciate the tutoring, but the rest of it… forget it ever happened.”
Forget it ever happened? Is he for real?
“Logan.” His name is a broken plea as he takes another step backward, away from me. With each step, a bottomless cavern opens between us, and the string that connects me to him, the one that has me immediately locating him in a room, knowing he’s nearby before I ever set eyes on him, is pulled taut.
A sharp tug pulls at my chest, the strain becoming unbearable as he opens the door. Without a backward glance or so much as a goodbye, he exits the room, and as the door snaps shut behind him, that cord connecting us is severed.
I’m left staring at the door long after he’s gone, my brain rifling through the murky mess of confusion as it tries to make sense of how everything went so wrong so quickly.
Somehow, I’m left even more bereft than before I dragged him in here. Before, I still had hope. Hope that this was a misunderstanding. Hope that whatever might be wrong had nothing to do withusand that we could work past it.
And in the absence of that hope, I had anger to cling to.
But now, I have nothing.
Nothing tethering me to him.
Nothing to ground myself.
He walked out the door as thoughwemeant nothing. As thoughImeant nothing.
And perhaps it shouldn’t have slayed me.
But it did.
