Page 91 of Never Bargain with the Boss

I can’t. I won’t. Ever.

“Yes, you are. It’s what you’re good at, right? Leaving?”

It’s a low blow, throwing her own past back at her, and she recoils as though I slapped her. I want to take the words back so badly, but I don’t. Not because they’re true, but because I think it’s the only way she will actually go. So I bite the insides of my cheeks, punishing myself while forcing myself to remain silent.

“I might be the one packing my bag, but I’m not the one leaving this time. I fought for this family, for you and Grace, and for the first time, even for myself, because you let me have hope that I could have a future here, something someone like me doesn’t get.” She laughs bitterly. “Guess I was right. I don’t deserve this.”

But she doesn’t glance around at the fancy trappings of my life. No, she looks right at me, saying that she doesn’t think she deserves… me.

“You’re like everyone else, leaving me eventually, one way or another.” She puts her hand over her heart. “Tell Grace I love her.”

She strides past me, putting so much space between us that not even the wind brushes me as she walks out. I don’t know how long I stand there, stuck in a loop replaying everything from tonight, but it’s long enough that Riley comes back down the stairs.

I hear her at the front door. “Bye, Cameron.”

And I’m alone.

Again.

I scream as loud as I can, the intense sense of loss too much to contain. Then I destroy everything that I haven’t already demolished, starting by chunking the damn tea mug at the wall. I see the splash of brown liquid on the white paint, and then all I see is… red.

RILEY

I’m numb.

Maybe it’s a defense mechanism my body’s activated to keep me from falling apart, or maybe it’s because I’m cold. The car’s heater is on, keeping things toasty despite the chilly December night outside, but I’m cold on the inside. Frozen. Dead.

That’s what it is. Not numb. Dead.

Still, I keep driving, the other headlights a blurry show I mostly ignore.

Eventually, I go through a drive-thru and park in the lot, forcing myself to swallow the tasteless French fries. Stupidly, I wonder if Cameron and Grace ate dinner because I never finished cooking it. Are the peppers and onion still on the cutting board in the kitchen? Probably not. Janey took care of me and probably took care of that too.

It’s like there’s no sign that I was ever there. My room is empty, I stripped the sheets from the bed and left them and my towel in the upstairs laundry room hamper, and there’s not even a Tupperware of leftovers to show that I cooked. I’m just… gone.

I’ve never thought about what remained in my wake any other time I left. But this time is different. I care. I want to havemattered, to have made a difference, to have existed for them the way they still do to me.

I drive some more, not wanting to stop. I don’t know where I’m going or what I’m doing. In fact, of the hundred miles I’ve driven tonight, I think I’m within ten miles of home.

No, not home. Cameron’s house.

I’ve been circling it, unable to break its gravitational pull on me. But my eyelids are getting heavier and eventually, I’m going to have to sleep. Reluctantly, I pull over at a hotel off the highway and go inside.

Getting a room is fairly quick, and mostly painless once the clerk stops his ‘so happy you chose us tonight’, overly-friendly act. I think he can tell that I didn’t choose to be here. I just need a place to go.

Once I have my keycard, I bring everything upstairs and dump it all haphazardly before taking my boots off. That’s as far as I get before I collapse into the stack of pillows and start bawling.

I cry for what I found and what I lost. For what Cameron fixed in me and for what he broke. I cry for Grace, knowing she’s going to be confused and worried when I’m not there. I even cry for Cameron, because I don’t want him to be hurt, or scared, or angry, and he was all of those things tonight.

Mostly, I just cry because it’s the only thing that releases this knot of pain in my chest.

I wakeup the next morning, hoping that it was all a nightmare.

What clues me in instantly that it wasn’t just a dream, but is in fact reality, is the trash bag of my things lying on the otherbed. It triggers something deep and dark inside me, and I hear Austin calling me ‘throwaway’ again.

He knew that’d hurt me. It’s why he said it.

And as a rule, I don’t use trash bags when I move because of that trauma. But I’d been in a hurry last night, confused and betrayed and spinning out, so I’d yanked my treasured clothes from their hangers and stuffed them into my suitcase randomly. When it was full and I still had more to pack, I’d done the one thing I swore to never do again and grabbed a trash bag.