Consumed (Addicted to You Book 1) (15 page)

A quick glance at Spencer stopped it all as if it hadn’t started. One look into his eyes allowed me to see the fear and pain and that was enough to make me calm down. I never wanted to scare or hurt him.

“Avery,” he barely spoke. “You are scaring me babe.”

“I’m…okay…” I managed to get out between the few silent sobs that were left.

“I’m going to get us both something to drink,” he turned towards the kitchen. “Are you okay until I get back?”

I nodded and forced a smile so that he wouldn’t feel worse than he already did and watched as he walked away. It wasn’t all fake. Somehow being at Spencer’s apartment and with him helped me to relax a little. I felt comfortable and at home with him.

“Here,” he handed me a glass of water. “Drink a little and then tell me what is going on.”

I took a sip as he slid onto the sofa beside me. I tried not to show that I didn’t like it. City water was gross and nasty to me. I preferred filtered or bottled and had actually paid a lot for the filter on the faucet at my place.

“It’s Colby,” I sighed, feeling my shoulders slump as the pain overwhelmed me again.

“She still mad at you? I’m sorry babe. I really didn’t realize it was her birthday,” he put his arm around me and pulled me into him.

“It’s not just that,” I admitted, trying to decide if I should talk to him about the truth or not.

The problem I had was that I didn’t want to make him feel bad. I didn’t want Spencer to believe that he was the cause of my problems with Colby. I was afraid he’d back off and possibly even leave. Plus, adding to the tension between them from his end didn’t seem like a good idea.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, sincerely trying to be there for me. “Is it me?”

While I might not have thought telling him the honest situation was a good idea, I couldn’t lie to him. So I simply nodded and didn’t offer an explanation.

“I was afraid of that,” I saw his face drop. “I never meant for this….”

“No,” I interrupted. “Don’t say that. It’s not your fault.”

“She’s your best friend Avery,” he reminded me. “You guys have a long history. You can’t let that go over me.”

“I didn’t,” I argued. “She did. She’s the one that keeps saying shit.”

“I know,” he squeezed his arms around me. “I know it hurts. But she’s just hurt.”

“Why?” I cried. “What did I do to her?”

“You found someone else you enjoy spending time with. Colby is used to being the one with men. Lots of them,” he laughed at his comment. “She’s used to you always being there for her. Now you have other things to do and she’s lonely.”

“That’s not my fault,” my voice raised.

“I didn’t say it was,” he smiled at me. “But she’s not handling it well. That doesn’t mean let her go. It means hold her tighter.”

“She thinks you don’t love me,” I saw his face cloud with anger, but only for a moment. “She thinks you are playing games and I’m just dumb.”

Spencer didn’t speak for a few minutes. My guess was that he was trying to collect his thoughts in order to not make things worse than they already were.

“Well, she’s wrong,” the statement was simple. “I do love you. More than I want to. I’m not playing games. And most importantly, you are not dumb.”

“She says that you left and came back as part of the game,” I looked up into his eyes as he held me. “That you’ll leave again.”

What I needed most in that moment was for Spencer to assure me that he would never leave. I needed to hear him say that he’d be there and loving me forever.

“I hope not,” his words didn’t fulfill what I needed to hear.

“You hope?” I asked.

“It’s complicated Avery,” his body stiffened beneath me. “You know that.”

“You had a failed relationship,” I pulled away from him. “Welcome to adulthood. We all had them. Why does that make you run away?”

“It’s more complicated than that,” he replied.

“So tell me,” I sat back and looked at him. “Make me understand.”

“You don’t need my past drama tonight,” he shook his head. “You have enough of your own to handle.”

“I want to know,” I pleaded. “I want to know what makes you the guy I love.”

I heard him sigh heavily and I knew that he would give me what I asked for. He always did. I also knew that he didn’t want to or know how.

“Her name was Jamie,” he started. “I was eighteen when we met and my life was a mess.”

“Mine still is,” I whispered, causing him to slide back over towards me and put his arm around me.

“She was a few years older and at first I wasn’t really interested in her. Not like that. I wasn’t like I am now Avery,” he hesitated as if waiting for a response that he wasn’t going to get. “I wasn’t interested in anything but having fun and trying to keep from facing things.”

“What things?” I asked, surprised by that statement.

“That’s another conversation for another day,” he brushed me off and continued his story. “Honestly, I took her home in the hopes of a little fun.”

“You were using her?”

“We were going to use each other,” he admitted. “That’s how I saw it. But Jamie wasn’t like most of the girls I’d known. She was beautiful,” I felt myself flinch at the statement. “But she was very ….she wasn’t going to do anything with me randomly. So we ended up watching a movie and talking.”

“I see,” the idea of him sitting there doing the same things he did with me with another woman hurt me. I knew it was a typical activity, but I didn’t like to think of Spencer with anyone else.

“To me, she became a challenge. I wanted to prove I could get what I wanted from her. She swore I couldn’t.”

I tried to keep my breathing calm so that he didn’t realize the conversation was bothering me.

“Are you sure you want to hear this Avery?” he asked, squeezing me tighter.

“Yes,” I lied. I did and I didn’t.

“So I started spending time with her. The whole idea was that no one told Spencer Phillips no. I would win her over, fuck her and then adios.”

“But you fell in love with her?”

“Not at first,” he told me. “It took some time. But she had her own challenge. She was going to save me.”

“Save you from what?” I asked, but he ignored.

“So she started working on that end. Giving me more to live for than what I had been. Keeping me away from the people that were destroying me. She knew what I wanted, and she dangled it in front of me to help me find myself.”

“So you fell in love with her?”

“I did,” he admitted. “She changed me Avery. You have no idea what I was like. Where I was headed. The things I was doing. The pain I felt.”

He took a break and sipped on his water. I watched as he ran his hand through his dark hair and wished I could comfort him.

“She gave me a reason to live. She gave me hope,” he continued. “I fell in love with her. I wanted to be with her. I wanted to spend my life with her.”

“So you proposed?”

“It took some time. About a year and a half altogether from when we met.” He looked as though he were thinking of details. “We still hadn’t had sex. Our first time was the night I proposed. She was so happy.”

“What happened?” I asked. “Why’d she cheat on you?”

“It wasn’t quite like that,” he admitted, surprising me. “I did some things. I went backwards. I hurt her.”

“I don’t understand,” I pulled away from him again. “you said she left you for your best friend.”

“She did,” he assured me. “She did. I hurt them both. They were working together to try and figure out how to help me. But I wasn’t having any of it.”

“What did you need help with?”

“It’s in the past,” he replied shortly, refusing to elaborate. “There’s no need to focus on that.”

“Well it’s hard to understand,” I confessed. “I’m confused. If you loved her then why would you hurt her?”

“Because there are things in this world that you can’t help. There are things that even love can’t stop.”

“I don’t believe that,” I told him.

“Trust me,” he replied. “I was a person that would repeatedly self-destruct. And no matter how much I wanted to do better for her, I couldn’t.”

“So you were cheating?”

“No,” he told me, assuring me that wasn’t the problem. “I wasn’t cheating. I wanted no one but her.”

“Then I don’t….”

“And you won’t Avery,” he stopped me. “I prefer to leave that where it was.”

“Okay, so go on,” I was frustrated only hearing half of the story.

“She gave me an ultimatum,” he told me. “Change or lose her. I didn’t think she’d do it. She loved me. But they both did. Her and Jason, my best friend. They both told me that if I didn’t stop, they’d leave.”

“And they did?”

“It took them a while. They tried to hang in for me. Leaning on each other and spending their time helping each other through.”

“Oh,” suddenly it made sense.

“Right,” he nodded. “I didn’t think they’d go, so I didn’t change. They got so close that they fell in love.”

“Wow,” I shook my head. “That sounds like a bad movie.”

“She ended things and left town with him,” he looked down, shoulders slumping and body leaning forward. “They never even betrayed me. She ended things before they did anything. But I pushed them to do it. I made them leave and pushed them together. Me.”

“Well,” I tried to think of what to say. “It changed you, so that’s good.”

“No it didn’t,” he admitted. “It took another year.”

“Oh,” I looked down. “So then why are you worried that I will leave you? If she didn’t leave you until…”

“I’m not,” he corrected me. “I’m afraid that I will push you away. That I will fuck up and hurt you. I’m afraid that by loving you, I will destroy you. Jamie was never the same Avery. She started as an innocent and naïve woman. Someone that believed in love and its ability to conquer anything. When she left she was hardened to the world. She was skeptical. She even doubted Jason a little bit. Afraid he’d do the same.”

“Is that why you ended things? You were going to do whatever it is that makes you hurt people?”

“No,” he added. “I was taking you to my brother’s and I realized that I didn’t want this to be that way. I didn’t want you to be hurt. So I stopped before you were.”

“I don’t understand,” I spoke softly as he pulled my head onto his shoulder.

“Neither do I Avery,” he shared his own thoughts. “Neither do I.”

“Are you planning to leave again Spencer?” I asked, tears filling my eyes.

“No,” he told me. “But I’m me. And I always do what I don’t think I will. I’m a fuck-up. You deserve so much better.”

“I don’t want better. I want you.”

“And I’m trying. But for now, I’m here.”

For the rest of the night Spencer talked to me about Colby and how I shouldn’t let a friendship go for anything, not even love. He told me how important having someone like Colby was in life and he made me promise to talk to her and work it out.

Even as he dropped me off at home the next morning he was pleading with me.

“I don’t think she wants me here,” I told him, scared to go inside. “She even said she might want me to move.”

“If she does, we will get a place. But at least try. For me. Please?”

I nodded and shut the door, turning to walk into my building.

“I love you,” I heard him call out as he drove off and I felt my stomach drop. Something in me knew that something bad was going to happen.

Chapter 17

“Party pooper,” Colby yelled, tongue stuck out and a chuckle in her voice.

She was dancing past me in the arms of a guy she had to have met in the previous few minutes. He was about an inch shorter than she was and that in itself was almost enough to make me laugh. But what I really found funny was the overall appearance of the guy.

Golden-brown colored hair sat atop his head in miniature spikes that were obviously created to blend in with current trends, and even more obviously failing at the job. He had pale skin dotted randomly with freckles, bright blue eyes and a pair of glasses that drew attention to them.

This guy was somehow a blend of endearing and dorky at the same time. Not typically the type of a man that Colby would connect with. Since maturing and becoming one of the prettier women available, she had locked down her taste to a specific style of man and this petite guy just didn’t fit in.

The way she twisted her hips against him as they danced, however, told me that she didn’t much care and he was in for a good night. But before I could learn more about him, he smiled in my direction and whisked Colby back towards the other side of the room.

I turned to the bartender and ordered another drink, still drowning my sorrows in the bottom of a bottle. The only good thing that had happened was that I’d managed to keep down half of a sandwich and a few chips earlier that afternoon- a requirement for a night of drinking. And one way to make Colby happy. I think that in her mind my failure to eat was just me being rebellious.