Shame (Ruin #3)(56)
Author: Rachel Van Dyken

I slumped to the floor and banged my head against the wall.

“So…” Gabe groaned. “She’s going to hate us forever.”

“Or longer,” I added. Fiery agony pulsed through me with every heartbeat. My heart wouldn’t stop hurting; my entire body hurt. How was it possible for someone so sick and twisted like Taylor to keep impacting people’s lives even now? Two years after his death. I hated that guy, freaking hated him, but maybe not as much as I hated myself for not rising above it, for not telling her the truth she had deserved to hear.

“If it makes you feel better,” said Gabe, lifting the journal in the air, “you look nothing like him.”

“No,” I snapped. “What would make me feel better is the girl I could possibly love for the rest of my life not hating me until I’m eighty.”

Wes whistled and shoved his hands into his pockets. “So, what now?”

“I won’t stop trying.” I squared my shoulders. “I can’t.”

“Good.” Wes nodded. “That’s what I wanted to hear. Because a girl like Lisa doesn’t deserve a guy who’s willing to give up just because he screwed up so bad it might take a lifetime of apologies to get it right.”

“Are you guys trying to make me feel better? Because you really suck at it.”

Gabe and Wes shared a knowing smile with one another, though by their body language I couldn’t tell if they were going to attack me or were just exhausted with the days events.

“What?” I glared at both of them.

“Ah, it always comes full circle.” Gabe shook his head. “Wes has issues, then I have issues, and then look, Dr. Blake’s sitting on the floor looking like a kicked puppy.”

“I will kick you,” I said, then swore and pounded the floor.

“Keep fighting for her.” Wes held out his hand to me. “It’s in the fight that you prove your worth.”

“And if I lose?”

“If you’re really worthy, you won’t lose, and you won’t quit, even when it looks like you’re about to.”

I peered around Wes to look at Gabe. “He do this often?”

Gabe shrugged. “What?”

“Make you feel stupid and insensitive all at once but wrap it up in a really nice quote so you feel warm and fuzzy while he’s saying it?”

“No,” said Gabe with a snort. Then he shook his head. “I get no warm fuzzies when he Hallmarks me… just supreme irritation, because most of the time he’s right.”

“Bastard,” I mumbled.

Wes grinned. His hand was still held out to me. I took it and pushed to my feet as he slapped me on the back. “Just give her time.”

“Right now, we should probably talk about her security, since I highly doubt she’s going to want to come back here.”

“I’ll make her.” A muscle worked in Gabe’s jaw. “I’ll freaking tie her to my car and make her, damn it!”

Wes sighed. “Gabe’s more of a tough-love sort of guy.”

“Yup.” Gabe nodded. “We’re like good cop, bad cop.”

“Which makes me?” I asked.

“The villain.” Gabe grinned.

I, however, did not.

“He’s kidding.” Wes shot Gabe a glare and led me out of the room. “But really, every good story needs a villain. May as well be both the hero and the bad guy. That way you’re kick-ass.”

“Some heroes be weak,” Gabe said from behind us. “All the princes in the fairytales? They don’t even have pecs.”

“It disturbs me that you look at their naked chests.” I sighed. “On so many levels.”

Gabe just barked out a laugh, while I numbly walked through my own house. It felt empty and cold without her, and I knew I didn’t want to keep living that type of existence. I wanted her to fill it, and I wanted to share it with her. So I would fight. I’d fight until she got so sick of me she had to get a freaking restraining order.

Okay, so maybe I wouldn’t fight in that way.

But I’d be there for her… for as long as it took her to trust me again. I’d be there.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

I thought everything was over with… until the threats started again. They reminded me of who I’d been, and the crappy thing about that reminder? Suddenly you realize that somewhere along the way, you never really changed, just exchanged one life for another without ever really dealing with the past. I’d pushed it so far back into my consciousness that I’d slipped into denial. And if there’s anything scarier than fear, it’s denial… because when you can’t face the truth, you’re left with nothing. —Lisa

Lisa

I DIDN’T TALK to the girls the whole way home. Kiersten kept trying to cheer me up while Saylor rubbed my arm. But I didn’t want them talking to me. I didn’t want them touching me. I didn’t want someone saying it was going to be okay. See, that’s the worst thing you can do to a girl. Say it’s going to be okay when she knows it’s not, when she’s knows that the only real ending to the story is heartache.

“Do you want us to stay with you?” Kiersten asked after pulling up to the dorms.

It was on the tip of my tongue to say yes out of habit, but I just wanted to be alone, and, in that moment, being alone totally trumped the fear that someone was able to sneak into my room. Besides, Jack hadn’t seen a thing and had Gabe seen anything on the cameras, he sure wouldn’t have let me go back. I made a mental note to send him a text in the morning. Right now, I was too pissed to even think about talking to him or Wes. And Tristan? Well, I was heartbroken.

Simply put, he’d encouraged me to trust again, and he’d made me fall for him knowing full-well that I was going to get burned. But he’d let me anyway. That wasn’t love. Love isn’t the expectation that eventually you’ll end up in heartache; it’s the expectation that you can fully trust another human being with everything and still hope for a happy ending.

He’d destroyed that by not telling me who he was.

I was never one of those girls who allowed emotions to control my actions I think that was why Taylor had chosen me in the first place so I wasn’t stupid. Part of me understood why Tristan had done it, but that didn’t make me feel any less hurt or devastated.

What kind of relationship could we have if he was constantly trying to protect me from things? That wasn’t love. That was control. And I was tired of control.