Chapter 92

I’m completely numb when I finally say goodbye to Rosalie. I’ve packed my personal things and she’s having anything else taken to my new office in Carrero Tower later today. HQ across town. No excuse to ever come this way again.

Jake stayed in his office the whole time I packed up, and no matter how many times I stared at that door, willing him to come to me and beg me stay, he did not. My heart’s broken into a million pieces, I’m amazed that it hasn’t killed me, that is still beats, that I’m still upright yet I’ve nothing left to live for.

I manage to leave via the stairs. I don’t want people to see my scrubbed clean, raw face, and puffy eyes. My hair hides most of it as I walk from the building with my box file, containing everything that is personal to me, everything that connected me to him, even his dumb novelty souvenirs from our many trips.

“Miss. Anderson?” I’m startled out of my sorrowful reverie by Jefferson, Jake’s driver.

“Yes?” I ask quietly, I must look nothing like my normal self, but he smiles at me gently, a hint of sympathy in his wrinkled gray eyes. He’s been there so many times with Jake and I, yet I barely know the man. Rarely acknowledged him. The elderly looking man with a warm face and impeccable manners. This will be the last I will see of him too. So monumental.

“Mr. Carrero told me I was to wait for you and take you home, Miss.” He leans forward relieving me of my box. I haven’t got the energy to argue, so I allow myself to be ushered into the back of the SUV and driven home. Back to Queens, back to the emptiness of my own room and own bed. A Jake-less life and an endless empty future.

Sarah isn’t home when I open the door to the apartment. I don’t even care, I don’t want to see anyone. I dump my belongings on the kitchen bunker and set about taking off every piece of PA Emma that is upon me. Hating her, loathing her. An anger building from some deep place that takes over and I turn to hysterical clawing to decloak my nemesis.

I hurl my shoes across the floor in rage, I rip off my jacket and skirt, and throw them down the hall dramatically, kicking them away. I strip piece by piece, every clothing item, every jewelry item, stockings and lingerie, panting, wild with exertion and stand naked in my own living room, bawling my heart out. Wanting to rid myself of every cold, controlled ice maiden piece of me that attributed to losing the only man I have ever wanted. I want to scream and rip my own hair out one root at a time.

I reach for a throw on the couch and wrap it around me, trying so hard to bring back the memory of being in his embrace. I feel like I’m dying, the pain is so acute, so overwhelming, all I can do is crumple onto the couch and let it overtake me.

I’m making up for a lifetime of bottled up tears and emotions, a lifetime of pain and rejection. Heartache. Abuse. Neglect. Jake cut through all of it and found a beating heart somewhere in the darkest depths of me. He kept trying to bring it to the light and I fought every step of the way.

Look where it got me. Alone and broken and losing the only man I was ever capable of trusting, ever capable of loving.

He has a child on the way, maybe he will try again with Marissa now I am no longer a thorn in his side, a constant distraction to ruin his day.

He called us toxic … That hurt the worst to hear. It struck me like a knife to the gut - I am toxic to him.

What does that even mean? I slowly poisoned him in some way, until he couldn’t bear it anymore.

I finally drag myself to my bedroom and pull on some pj’s. I haven’t worn anything like this in so long, I am amazed I even still own a pair. I climb on the bed, moving aside the huge bear Jake won for me at a street carnival on one of our trips. It causes a new slash of pain across my chest and I sob into the bear’s stomach, slumping across it pitifully.

I can’t take this, I should have said something to him, I should have at least tried to tell him how I felt. Maybe if I had, then I wouldn’t be here now, crying into a plushie’s fluffy belly; the only symbol I have of him that I can actually hold this way. As if something dawns on me. I sit up and dry my eyes.

What would I have said to him? I love you, Jake? – Why not, it’s true! What if he doesn’t feel the same way?

Who am I kidding? He sent me away … He doesn’t feel the same way about me.

I think back to every time he tried to get me to open up, every kiss, and having sex with me. I let myself wonder if it was all ever about the challenge and it smarts.

Had I just been something to conquer?

No—I don’t think I had been. I learned to trust him, saw more than just the Casanova playboy. I saw the real Jake. The caring, funny, and sometimes vulnerable, Jake. He told me everything about his life. Our bond was real … Our friendship. He’d been affectionate and attentive while no one else cared for me and looked after me the way he did. I refuse to believe that none of it was real.

I pick up my iPad and scroll the monumental list of songs we sent one another over the past few months, the jokes, the apologies, the hidden meanings, trying to see the truth behind it all … I stop on a song, pausing my inner anguish with that of confusion as my gaze falls on the unfamiliar.

Skylar Grey—“I Know You”.

I wonder when he sent this?

It’s not one I remember ever being gifted to me, no memory of it as I flit back through our time together and I can’t recall him ever sending me this song. Sometimes he just added music to my iPad for me when we were bored or on a flight. He would sit and leave me songs in humor, or just because… he cared. Because he knew I would listen to them. Was this one of them? I pause and click play on the music file, laying back on my bed to listen to the lyrics intently.

The haunting melody drifts over me soothingly, but the words strike a chord deep inside; each word like a message from him, so accurate in every way … Asking me to let him in, to give him a chance to love me. That he knows I put myself through so much pain, because of my past; begging me to just stop pushing him away. The lyrics cause my soul to ache and a new flood of tears breaks silently down my face. Longing to see it as a real form of communicating with me.

Why hadn’t I listened to this before? Why now when it’s too late? … What does this mean?

When the music fades away, and my sobs silently subside, I sit up, taking my iPad in my hands without hesitation. Sniffing, I scroll iTunes purposefully … There’s a song that I listened to, a dozen times when we were apart, I need to send it to him now. It says more than I ever could. A girl telling a guy that she loves him, despite her walls, she cares. Her memories of him and what he means to her. That she misses him and all his crazy ways. She will do anything to be with him.

Maybe it isn’t too late after all, he put that song on there for me to find, maybe he thought I already had and just never told him, ignored it.

Had that hurt him? Been part of the reason he has withdrawn?

Finding the one I’m looking for; I forward it to Jake’s email before doubt can creep in to stop me. Before I can talk myself out of it with logic and sense … and fear.

Avril Lavigne—“Wish You Were Here”.

It says everything I want to say to him.

I sit staring at my mailbox chewing my lip anxiously, frozen still, waiting, watching, praying he opens it and listens to the song. Every lyric equally able to pass a message, as his just has for me. I pray I’m not too late. Tapping my foot nervously.

I’m aware of every noise of my room, and the world outside as the minutes drag on endlessly. Like a weird countdown of torture in my airless cell. I’m holding my breath and even my heart has stopped beating it seems.

I finally get an email notice that Jake Carrero has gifted me a song as my page times out. A ping that startles me to flinch and gasp, scrambling with fumbling fingers to touch on it and bring it back to life. Even his name appearing at the top of my screen makes my chest constrict in painful suffering. With wobbly hands, loss of coordination because I am so damned scared, I slide my screen cover aside, lighting it back up, my heart pounding through my chest, my breath halting. I’m shaking violently as I open the email to read the subject:

“Always an Avril fan.”

Jake Carrero has sent you an iTunes gift.

I inhale sharply as I scan the next line…blood draining from my face as realization hits home. Crushing agony consuming me heart and soul. He couldn’t be any clearer.

“Let Me Go” by Avril Lavigne.

My world tips into darkness as pain overtakes and I collapse onto the bear again, the iPad sliding to the floor while wailing out in hellish anguish. Like someone dying horribly.

He doesn’t want to know; he’s gone and I’m sure I’ll die

End of Book One.