Chapters (24)
“Maybe you don’t,” Eli agreed, “but it’s obvious that you haven’t resolved everything where he’s concerned. If you had, you wouldn’t have flipped out the way you did. You wouldn’t have needed to run away.”
Brynne dropped her hands to her lap, clenched them into fists, slammed them once against her thighs. At last, she turned to glare at Eli.
“Now you’re calling me a coward?”
Eli whistled once, in exclamation. It was not a happy tune. “I didn’t say that,” he pointed out. “You need to work through this whole Clay Nicholls thing, Brynne, with or without professional help. Until you do, or at least start making an effort, you and I will have to cool it.”
“I told you, I don’t love Clay!”
“I believe you, but you need to deal with whatever it is you do feel for him. I care for you a lot, Brynne. Maybe I even love you. But until you bury a few ghosts, I don’t see us—you and me—going anywhere that would be good for us.”
This was it, Brynne thought miserably.
She and Eli had barely begun to date.
Now they were breaking up.
Brynne wanted to sob, but she was too proud to do that.
The silence was thick and heavy, weighing on Brynne’s spirit, causing her shoulders to droop and her head to bow.
A single tear trickled down her left cheek.
Eli, with the saddest smile Brynne had ever seen, wiped it away with the side of one thumb.
“Don’t,” he all but whispered, his voice was so low, hardly more than a breath. “Please.”
Brynne sniffled, praying that one tear wasn’t the harbinger to a torrent of ugly crying. “So, we’re back to being just friends?”
“For now,” Eli replied, after a long time. “I’m not angry, Brynne. I’m not jealous of that guy you dated before. You loved him. Things turned sour, and that hurt you. I understand, believe me.”
“But?”
“But Clay can still rile you up, and that means you’re not ready for another relationship. Not a serious one, anyway, and that’s the only kind I want. I don’t do anything by halves, Brynne. I’m either in, or I’m out. Nothing in between.”
He sounded so calm. So sad.
And his mind was made up.
He didn’t want her.
All that they’d shared in their short relationship was for nothing. They hadn’t been in a relationship, not really.
They’d had a fling, and it was over. Just like that.
Festus, who had been sitting in the back seat all along, made his presence known.
He gave a single, despairing whimper, and Brynne’s heart fractured like shattered glass.