Prologue
Bentley
She turned away, hiding her face from me, and I knew what she was doing.
She was trying to hide it, the pain I had caused her again. Because she knew how much those tears destroyed me. But I needed to see them, to own the fact that I had caused them, as much as it killed me to do it.
Her shoulders shook as I pulled her towards me, crushing her against my chest.
“I’m sorry Roxy,” I croaked. “I’m so sorry.”
She nodded, but I knew those words meant nothing to her. I’d been saying them far too often, and there were only so many times I could say them before they lost all meaning entirely.
I was on a path to self-destruction, and I was dragging her down with me. This beautiful, angelic woman who deserved so much more than this. So much more than I could give her.
She’d been through enough shit, and yet I didn’t care. For my own selfish reasons, I had clung to her, keeping her within my grasp. Because during the lucid moments, when she was there, when I was with her… they were the best moments of my life.
But those moments were no longer enough to keep her holding on like this. For a man that didn’t deserve her.
That was the only way. Because I had no self-control when it came to Roxy. She was the balm that soothed me. The light to my darkness. The chance at happiness that had always seemed to elude me. And now it was too damn late.
“You need to go on home, Rox,” I said gently. “Please.”
“No, Bentley.” She held her chin stubbornly, looking up at me with those tear stained green eyes. “I know what you’re gonna’ do as soon as I leave. I can smell it on your breath. You need to stop. You need help…”
“Dammit, Roxy,” I hissed, thrusting my hand through my hair in frustration as I pulled away. “Don’t tell me what I need, you are the last person in this town to know what I need.”
Her chin wobbled, and I could tell my words had the intended effect, but she still didn’t move.
“Just tell me why,” she pleaded. “Is this about Annabeth?”
I stared down at her, her vulnerability laid wide open for me, and I shook my head. It would be so damn easy to tell her it was. To hurt her that way, making her think she wasn’t good enough. But I wouldn’t do that. Not that way.
The truth was, this had nothin’ to do with Annabeth. This guilt was somethin’ I’d been harboring for so damn long, nobody in town even realized it. My time in the military and then the fallout with Annabeth had only added to it.
I’d wasted so much time chasing something I thought was my chance at happiness, that I’d never stopped to look at what was right there in front of me all along. Roxy was my breath of fresh air. My soft place to land. She was home to me.
I’d never felt anything like what I felt for her, but it scared the hell out of me. And the longer we spent together, the more she discovered about me. The things I didn’t want her to know. The darkness and the anger and the pain.
It wasn’t fair to pull her into that vortex, because I couldn’t be fixed. And Roxy was a fixer. She thought she could help me, I could see it in her eyes. She thought if she just persisted, I would get better.
But I was never going to get better. And I realized in that moment that I needed to make her hate me. To make her never want to look at my face again. To make Bentley Daniels, the one person she’d never speak to again.
Chapter One
Roxy
“Hey sugar,” Amy called out from the front, the bell on the door announcing her entrance. “I brought lunch!”
“I’ll be out in a minute,” I shouted.
Finishing up my inventory list, I shoved it back into the filing cabinet and gathered up my purse. I made my way to the front of Bits N’ Bobs, where Amy was leaning against the counter chatting away with Reagan.
“You wanna’ head down to the park?” I asked. “I could use some sunshine.”
“Sure thing,
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