He didn’t even turn around. “I don’t give a shit about them. You’re the one I give a shit about. Now tell me what’s up.”
I bowed my head and sighed.
Tucker continued to wait, forgetting the girls altogether.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know what?”
“I don’t know what’s wrong.”
He cocked an eyebrow.
“Cleo and I haven’t spoken in three weeks…”
His eyebrow lowered, and he crossed his arms over his chest. “What happened?”
I didn’t want to relive the conversation. “After she dropped off Derek, she came to my place and…said she wanted to be with me.”
He shook his head slightly. “And you fucked it up?”
“I told her I didn’t want to be in a relationship.”
He sighed loudly.
“Now, she won’t talk to me.”
“She dropped you as a client?”
“No…she still does everything for me. But she waits until I’m not home, and if I am home, she sends someone else instead. Now I have no interaction with her at all.”
He watched me for a while, pity in his gaze.
I watched the girls get into the cab with the guys who replaced us.
Tucker didn’t care. “Deacon, why isn’t this obvious to you?”
I stared at him.
“You don’t miss what she does for you…you just miss her.”
My life still ran fluidly. She still took care of me completely. That part hadn’t changed. The only thing missing was her…her smile…our conversations…our friendship.
My hand moved to my chest. “I feel angry all the time. But I don’t feel anything at all at the same time. There’s this pain right here that just won’t go away. And I hate people…but I feel so lonely. I feel like there’s something missing.”
He continued to study me. “Deacon, you told her you didn’t want a relationship…but you were already in a relationship.”
I didn’t understand the statement.
“She was the person you spent all your time with. She was the person you confided everything to. She was the person you had a connection with. Now, that’s gone… You’re going through a breakup. What you feel is heartache.”
“But we didn’t do anything—”
“Relationships don’t need to be physical. They’re even stronger when they aren’t physical, actually. Just because you didn’t kiss her or sleep with her doesn’t mean you weren’t in that relationship with her…completely.”
I dropped my gaze.
“You haven’t been with anyone in a long time, right?”
I nodded.
“Why?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“You were picking up women like crazy, and then you just stopped. You stopped because Cleo is the one you want.”
I continued to stare at the concrete. “I don’t want to be in another relationship—”
“Well, you are. Too fucking bad. And you were in the best relationship of your life. That’s why it hurts so much, Deacon. Because she was the right person for you. It doesn’t hurt unless it was good. The more it hurts, the more real it was.”
I raised my chin and looked at him.
“Deacon, you’ve already waited so long. It might be too late to fix this.”
My heart started to race.
“She’s nothing like Valerie. The comparison is fucking insulting.”
Guilt rushed through me, remembering the way I’d spoken to her, said things I didn’t mean. I was just pissed off with Valerie at the time, letting the emotions get to me.
“Fix this, Deacon…if there’s still time.”
I sat on my couch in my condo, my face resting in my palms. Now that I’d told Tucker how I felt, the pain was worse. It was a constant throbbing sensation that never dulled. It was there when I woke up; it was there when I went to sleep. Even when I was focused on my work, not thinking about anything, it was there.
I didn’t realize what she meant to me until she was gone.
I’d always been alone, but now I hated how lonely it made me feel.
I hated myself for the way I’d hurt her, for the stupid shit I’d said.
She was the greatest thing that had ever happened to me…and I threw her away.
Sixteen
Cleo
My coffee table was bare now.
I threw the vase of flowers against the wall and watched it shatter to pieces.
Since I let go of my housekeeper, the shards were still in random places on the kitchen floor. The flowers had been tossed and the dirty water had been cleaned up, but I didn’t have a broom to sweep up every single piece of the glass, so I just kicked it under the counters and refrigerator.
That’d been almost a month ago.
Deacon broke my heart just the way I broke that vase, and I spent my time trying to forget about him, to return to life as it had been before we met. I threw myself into work, made some mistakes with Jake, and attempted to resume a normal life.
That was easier said than done.
There were times I missed him. He used to be my closest friend, the person I looked forward to seeing the most. I missed the things we used to do together, our easy conversations, spending time with his son.