Page 82 of On the Line
She had always been a good liar, but she was about to put on the show of a lifetime.
“It might be bullshit to you, but it’s who I am. You just met the people who raised me, who made me like this. I told you from that very first night I don’t believe in love, that I don’t do relationships. And you kept pushing and pushing until we ended up here. I never wanted to be here!” She cried, voice rising as she unloaded all her pent-up fears on him. “I begged you not to push this. Not to push me. And now here we are. Well…I’m out. I want out. This is over.”
“Lexie…” He took half a step forward, but she backed away.
“I just can’t love you the way you deserve, Mitch,” she said quietly. “You deserve someone who can give you the beautiful, happy, fairytale life that your big, perfect, romantic heart deserves. And I’m just not that woman.”
Mitch sighed. “You don’t mean that,” he said. “How is it that after all these months you still don’t realize that you’reexactlywhat I want andeverythingI need? You’re the love of my life, Lex. Why doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
“It means everything to me,” she said. “I’ve never had anyone love me the way you do. And I can’t keep pretending it’s a love I deserve. I’m messy and emotionally stunted and screwed up and I can’t give you what you want or need. I can’t give you my whole heart. It’s time you realize it. Trust me, I’m doing us both a favor by ending this now.”
He stared at her, expression blank, blinking slowly like an owl, then his gaze darkened, the muscle in his jaw jumping as he clenched his teeth together. “You don’t get to tell me you love me and, in the same breath, tell me to leave. That’s not how this works.”
Biting her trembling lower lip and looking away from him, she said, “Please don’t fight me on this.” Her voice was cracked and shaky. “Please just go.”
She turned her back on him fully as he stalked into the foyer, fighting back tears as he put on his shoes and dug his jacket out of the closet. A second later, the door clicked open, but it didn’t shut. Instead, he spoke.
“You can try to deny and fight what’s between us all you want, Alexandra,” he said. And God, she loved the sound of her name as it fell from his lips. She almost went to him then, instead digging her nails into her palms, the tiny crescents of pain grounding her, keeping her rooted in place. Shehadto see this through. “But one day, you will give in. Because we’re endgame. We always have been.”
A moment later, the door slammed shut behind him, the sound a bullet to her heart.
And as though she’d been shot, Lexie crumpled to the ground and cried.
“Goodmorning,Jackson,”Mitchsaid. He was standing at his kitchen counter, a protein shake in one hand, phone in the other. Moments before his agent’s call came through, Mitch had sent another text to Lexie, begging her to reconsider. These last three days without her had been torture. He knew she was reading his texts, but she had yet to reply to a single one.
“So I’ve got some news,” Jackson said.
“Shoot,” Mitch replied. “Is it some new partnership deal?”
“Not exactly…” His usually-effervescent agent sounded formal and subdued, and Mitch’s stomach dropped out.
“Don’t say it,” he said, already guessing what news was coming. “I don’t want to hear it. Just…fix it.”
“I’m afraid it’s a done deal, Mitch. There’s no fixing this one. The Warriors have dealt you.”
“Where,” he said flatly.
“The Knights. Pack a bag. I’ll meet you out there this afternoon.”
Mitch hung up on Jackson without saying anything further and sat down hard on his couch, staring at the blank television screen.
Then he swiped across his phone and dialed Lexie’s number.
Given the circumstances, he would do anything she needed him to in order to fix this before he left. Hehadto make things right.
It rang and rang and rang until her voicemail picked up.
“Hey, it’s Lexie. Don’t leave a message because I won’t listen to it.”
“Fuck!”
Two excruciatingly long hours later, after a brutal phone call with his mother during which she sobbed endlessly about her baby moving across the country, there was still no answer from Lexie, and Mitch was running out of time before he had to leave for the airport.
Were things between them well and truly over? She hadn’t exactly left any room for arguments when she kicked him out of her apartment three days before, but he thought they’d have more time than this. That he’d be able to show up at her door, wear her down, and beg her to reconsider.
To remind her that he loved her, and that everything would be okay as long as they had that.
He scrubbed a hand over his face. It was all so messy, so complicated, and unfortunately, he didn’t have the time to sit her down and make her see the error of her ways.
