Total pages in book: 179
Estimated words: 170878 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 854(@200wpm)___ 684(@250wpm)___ 570(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 170878 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 854(@200wpm)___ 684(@250wpm)___ 570(@300wpm)
I was proud of my tone. I was channeling my inner Calliope.
Beau’s jaw clenched and his hands fisted at his sides. I knew he wanted to argue. Fight back. Say … what, I didn’t know. Couldn’t care. He’d said everything that mattered. I didn’t want to hear more from him. Couldn’t.
“We will be cordial, for Clara’s sake,” I continued. “It is up to you if you would like to tell her why I’m gone, or I can.”
Beau continued to stare at me. “I’ll tell her. But won’t you stay—”
“No,” I cut him off. “I’m not staying here another minute.”
“Clara will want to see you when she wakes up. She’s used to seeing you in the morning.”
As my gaze tinged red with fury, I forced myself to take steadying breaths. The prospect of not seeing Clara, in PJs, hair mussed, swinging her legs on the barstool made me want to double over. The realization that I wouldn’t get to cuddle in her bed and read her stories. That she wouldn’t come into bed with me and Beau first thing in the morning….
I cut those thoughts off, preventing a pained whimper from leaving my mouth. Tilting my head up, I regarded Beau.
“She was used to a lot of things that are going to change,” I told him icily. “Things that were your choice in changing. Don’t lay them at my feet. Whatever pain Clara feels comes from you.”
Beau flinched. Rightly so. Let him bathe in the acid of that truth.
“Bring Clara to the park tomorrow.” I hefted my bags onto my shoulders. “We’ll make snowmen, and I’ll … I’ll talk to her there.”
Beau pursed his lips and stepped forward. “You’re not carrying all those bags on the icy sidewalk.”
“You lost the privilege to try to decide what I will and won’t carry.” I clutched on to the bags for dear life.
Would it be a bitch getting them to the car? Yes.
Was I in danger of slipping and cracking my head open on the concrete? Also yes.
But I preferred to bleed out in the snow than have Beau closer to me. Helping me. Playing the gentleman after he’d wrecked me completely.
I wanted to be the one who had a parting line, either one that was utterly petty and biting or wistful, like your girl is lovely, Hubble. But I didn’t have either of those things in me.
The ending to relationships, to great loves wasn’t something beautiful or cinematic. It was immensely painful, never doing justice to how long it took to create. Fracturing it was much easier.
My boots made a low thump as I walked past him into the entryway.
“You need to take the coat.”
His words were harsh, cold, stopping me in my tracks.
I turned around to where Beau’s eyes were zeroed in on the coats hanging by the door. I didn’t need to look to see them. Clara’s tiny one, mine, then Beau’s.
As if we were a family.
I stared at Beau. Then the coat. “You bought that.”
“For you,” he ground out. “I bought that coat for you, Hannah. There are no strings. I bought that coat for you to be warm. I’m not letting you walk out that door into the fucking freezing weather without it.”
I choked out a sound that was a mix between a laugh and a sob. “You won’t let me walk out the door?” The spite in my words was ugly and tasted wrong, yet I spat them all the same. “You are the reason I’m walking out this door, Beau. You and your emotional wounds and your misplaced sense of nobility. That’s why I’m walking out this door. At your request. You don’t get to dictate what I’m wearing or what I take when I do it.”
I was proud of that speech, at the fact that I didn’t fall to my knees while I said it. My throat, while feeling dangerously narrow, did not close up until the end. Only one tear fell which I angrily swiped away.
The words had been hurled at Beau. Full of rage, resentment, and most of all, hurt. But you couldn’t see the hurt when it was layered underneath all the anger.
Beau taught me that.
He looked utterly defeated. But he leaned forward and opened the door. It might’ve been one of the most painful gestures he’d ever made.
I didn’t let it show as I walked out. Didn’t let myself look at him.
Don’t trip, don’t trip, I chanted as I tentatively walked to my car. I knew Beau was still watching my every move, poised and waiting to come catch me if I fell.
I’d thought the late snow was some kind of gift, one last opportunity to make snowmen with Clara. Huddle inside and drink hot chocolate together before we welcomed spring.
Now it only served to ensure that the outside temperature matched my insides. Cold. Frozen. Lifeless.