If I Break THE COMPLETE SERIES Bundle (102 page)

I
can’t breathe. How do you stop your heart from beating a thousand miles a minute? How do you escape feelings that are wrapped around you like a noose? I have been swallowed up whole. One sentence was all it took for me to know it was him. My gift and my curse, my ending, my beginning, my best dream and my worst nightmare all wrapped in one. Cal Scott, in all of his glory—I knew it. From the moment I heard his voice on the phone, anxiety crawled up my spine. As I made my way up each floor level, I knew it was him. I imagined this moment 
so
 many times. I dreamed about it, prepared for it to happen but never 
ever
 expected for it to happen like this. Which is fitting since I never know what to expect from him.

He’s watching me, his eyes narrowed on mine, his gaze locked there. It’s like time has stopped, the atmosphere has changed. It’s quiet, to quiet, just like the moment before lightning strikes from the sky and all hell breaks loose.

I’ve seen him almost every day for the past two months but not like this, not this intensity in his gaze, his presence overwhelms me, causing fear, excitement and anxiety to course through my entire body. The icy glare on his face sends chills down to my very core. I’m frozen in place as I look at him.

What the hell happened
? All of this time Chris is here and then, just like that, he’s gone and this happens, right after I slept with him.

I’m confused, I’m nervous and, with the way Cal’s looking at me, a little scared—scared of what’s to come because the energy exuding from Cal lets me know it’s about to be bad.

Cal.

He’s
 the one I married. The one I’m in love with, the man who I spent years of my life with. But I’m trembling because my body can barely contain the emotions crashing against one another inside of me. The man I loved and loathed. There’s so much I want to say to him but my tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth. I don’t know what to do and oh my God, what happened to Chris?

Last night we made love—well, Chris and I made love—and I told Chris he was the one I wanted.

Does Cal know what happened?

Shit, shit, shit!

Why the hell do I feel guilty
? They’re both the same fucking person but, the way he’s looking at me, with disdain, anger and maybe even disgust makes me feel like the lowest creature on the planet. He unfolds his arms and approaches me, each step making my heart try to stampede out of my chest. I expect him to touch me as he gets closer but he steps around me and closes the door that I left open
.

“What happened?” I ask, my voice barely over a whisper. His hand firmly grips my wrist and he turns me around to face him.

“You tell me.” His voice is low and stings me but I try not to show it.

“What do you mean?” I ask, feeling my hands quivering in his grasp. I know Cal would never hurt me but he’s so angry.

“
I love you Chris. You’re the one I want, Chris
,” he says, mimicking my voice.

“Are you kidding?” I let out a nervous chuckle.I wish he wasn’t serious; but I know that he is.

“You think I’m fucking kidding?” he asks tightly as he quickly relinquishes his hold and shoves me away, causing me to stumble. He storms across the room with his hands on his head but, in a split-second, he whips back around.

“How could you do that to me?!” he shouts and I have to fight to breathe. His voice is deep and strong like it always is but, from the look in his eyes, I can see his vulnerability. His anguish is hitting me like a truck. I’ve never seen him like this. He’s hurt and I don’t understand. That’s a lie because I get it. I don’t fully understand it but I do get it. It’s the only thing shutting me up right now.” I try to think of something to say as tears swell in my eyes.

“You don’t get to cry, Lauren!” he says angrily.

“Cal. I—I...”

“What? What do you have to say? Tell me!” he demands, walking closer towards me but, before I can even answer, he starts again.

“
I loved you for years
and all it took was for him to smile your way a couple of times, tell you how much
 I
 love you, and your legs fly the fuck open for him?!” he asks. “You tell him you love him. That 
he’
s who you want!”

I try to command the tears forming in my eyes to stop. “You don’t understand,” I squeak out.

“
You
 don’t understand!” He gestures his finger towards me. “I—I can’t even look at you right now,” he growls before grabbing a pair a keys off the table.

“Where are you going?!
”

“You can’t just leave!” I shout, grabbing his arm.

“Don’t touch me,” he snarls snatching away from me.

“So you hate me now? Is that it? You hate me?” I’m actually crying now.

“I wish I could hate you,” he says bitterly but this time he heads into the bedroom instead of out of the door. Before he crosses the threshold he turns to face me. “You were supposed to be different,” he says, shaking his head. “But you’re like everybody else,” he adds quietly and the look in his eyes causes my breath to hitch.

He looks broken and I think I broke him. I broke Cal and I broke Chris. His dad’s right. I’m not good for either of them. I try to stop the wail coming from my mouth as my emotions try to escape from my body. There’s too much energy I’m trying to keep pent up but I can’t let it out. I slowly sink down to the floor.

How did things get like this? How did I end up here?

When did I become the villain?

He’s looking at me with bitterness, disgust, and what’s bordering on hatred. He’s never looked at me like that before. How can he be so angry at me, like I was with another person? I love him so much. I’ve loved him every day—
every
 part of him. The good and the bad.

I hate myself for crying, that I’m sitting here like a sad little girl. How did things get like this? Today everything was supposed to be better. After being with Chris, things were supposed to be good and I have a feeling they’re about to get worse.

I don’t know what to do. Do I call the Scotts? Do I call Dexter? Did sleeping with me cause Chris to run away and hide? A part of me is glad that Cal’s here but how can I not feel terrible knowing that Chris is gone and Cal is in a rage? I don’t know what he’s going to do. I think back to my conversation with his dad. What he said would happen if Cal came back. Oh God, I can’t believe I’m even considering what his dad said. I have never seen Cal as mad as he is now. The only thing worse than his anger is his disappointment. But why is he so angry? Because I slept with
 him
? After two years of being alone I slept with 
him
 and he’s upset with me like I betrayed him?

My phone rings, interrupting my thoughts. I pull it out and see that it’s Mrs. Scott. How the hell am I supposed to explain this to the Scotts? It’s going to be my fault of course. 
Maybe
 it is my fault. Not only do I have to tell them that Chris is now Cal again, but I also have to tell them that he’s mad at the world and I have no idea what he’s going to do. I guess I never did, but now it’s like he’s on a hinge that’s barely hanging on and I can’t deal with it right now. The hollowness in my chest turns into a burning sensation as tears sting my eyes. I want to scream.

This is almost like
déjà
vu. Being left on the floor crying, desperate, broken because of this man and he’s done it again. I crawl off the floor and onto the large sofa, curl up into myself, and close my eyes. I’m emotionally drained, mentally and physically exhausted like I’ve run a marathon.

Chris wanted me to love him. Cal apparently doesn’t want me to love Chris. It’s all too much to think about—how I ended up in a tug of war with one man. The man who is my daughter’s father, who has a shitload of emotional baggage. The depths of which I don’t think I ever fully understood until now. They’re the same person but neither of them see the other as who they are. Cal really looked at me as if I cheated on him.

How can he not understand it’s him I love—whoever he decides to call himself. I hate feeling like this and really I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t just lie here and cry. That’s not the type of woman I want Caylen to be. I may have hurt him, but it wasn’t intentional and what he’s done to me is much worse. If he hadn’t, I wouldn’t even be in this situation.

If anyone should be hurt it should be me. How can he have the audacity to say those things to me? Like I didn’t wait for him for two years. Like he didn’t leave me alone to raise a child. I basically forgave him for having a freakin’ fiancée and the fact that he lied to me about his condition. I sit up and clutch my chest, the hollowness there quickly incinerating as my anger washes over and through me. Why should I lie here and cry and worry? I’ve forgiven him a thousand times over. He can forgive me once, even though I’m not even sure that I need to be forgiven.

He may be furious with me but he still loves me or he’d be gone. I head up the stairs, anger my new source of energy. I swing the door open. It’s completely dark aside from a small sliver of light peeking into the room from the window but I can see that he’s lying on the bed with his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling. The sight of him makes me pause, my once seething anger disappearing in seconds. This man. This man could easily be the death of me.

“You’re still here?” he says. His tone suggests it’s a joke and my dissipating anger starts to grow again. “I thought you’d have ran off and tattled to Chris’s mommy and daddy.”

“You have a lot of nerve,” I say as I plant my feet on the floor.

He glances over at me. “Oh, that’s a nice welcome. You fuck Chris and want to argue with 
me
?” He laughs bitterly. He’s switched, the emotion pouring off him earlier has been replaced with this indifferent, arrogant sarcasm. That will make this a whole lot easier.

I walk over to him and stare him directly in the eye. “This isn’t about Chris. This is about you,” I say venomously.

“It wasn’t yesterday,” he says sarcastically as if this is a big joke.

“You’re still the same selfish jerk you always were,” I say and he begins to laugh. “You think this is funny?!” I yell at him and push his chest. He sits there, firmly planted as if it my hits have absolutely no effect on him, and I completely lose it. “How dare you!” I yell at him, pulling at him with all my might, swinging my arms as hard as I can, trying to make him feel a fraction of my pain. “How could you do that to me?” I shout at him as we begin to tussle.

“Calm the fuck down!” he says, trying to contain me. I’ve gone from helpless fool to crazy woman in the span of ten seconds.

“What is wrong with you?!” he says, covering up a laugh that makes me even more furious.

“You’re what’s wrong with me” I say, throwing fist after fist at him.

“Lauren, stop!” he says, finally grabbing me and throwing me on the bed. A second later he’s on top of me, pinning me down. I hate that he’s stronger than me, that he can contain me.

“I hate you!” I say, catching my breath, tears filling my eyes again. This man drives me insane, pulls my spirit out from the inside. For him to doubt that I love him for even a second hurts, especially when he pretends to not give a flying fuck.

“
You
 left me Cal. 
You. You 
lied to me. I waited for 
you
 for almost two years. I had Caylen alone. You abandoned me, I didn’t have an inkling of an idea of what was going on with you and still I never gave up on us. EVER!” I shout at him and I can see his hardened expression soften but I don’t care. I take a deep breath, trying to ignore the feelings that shoot through my body at his glance. My anger’s turned into an overwhelming sadness. I close my eyes remembering how it felt to lose him.

“You almost broke me,” I mutter, not trying to hide my emotions. I’m tired of hiding them. I hid them from everyone else, even Chris. Cal, he’s the one who needs to see them.

He lowers his gaze to mine, like he’s thinking, absorbing my words. He leans down closer to my face and my entire body is on edge. His lips near mine. It’s been so long. So long since we were like this in this position. But it hurts. His eyes look into mine, almost like Chris did a few hours ago. His hands loosen their grip. Finally he sits up, freeing me from the confinement his body created as he pinned me down. I scold the part of me that wants to stay in this position. The tension is the only thing in the room thicker than the silence.

“When I left you, I thought I was doing the right thing,” he says, his eyes finding mine. They’re no longer the light green I’ve grown accustomed to over the past few weeks, but deep, dark, and menacing, like the sky before a storm.

“I left you because I knew I’d fucked up. I’d waited too long to tell you the truth and then I found out the medication I thought would fix me could actually kill me,” he says, his eyes leaving mine and finding the floor.

“What medicine?” I ask and he looks up at me.

“It doesn’t matter. It didn’t work,” he says, his voice quiet but stern. I think about what he means by the medication
not
working.