Break Me Slowly (23 page)

“
Are you okay?” Megan asked. I put my palm over the receiver to keep the hiccup of despair out of my voice.

“
Yeah. Fine. Keep me posted, okay? I know getting some space can be good…”

“
I’ll check in with you. I’m going to visit my mom upstate. I’ll see you next week, okay?”

“
Okay,” I whispered.

The line went dead. I looked around my cold apartment. Alone. I was completely alone. Even the dysfunctional world I
’d had before Adam was in shambles. There would be no picking up. No starting over.

Because there was nothing left to salvage.

~

There was a loud poundi
ng in my ears and I my head felt like it was being pushed between two planks of wood.

My eyes hurt. I tried to open them and was greeted by a fog of leftover tears. The booming
sound rang out again and it took me a moment to realize I was on the living room floor. It was still dark out, so I must not have been asleep that long.

I sat up
. Every bone creaked and whined. I palmed my temple and willed the rising headache to go away. It was no use. Every muscle was aching. Every brain cell was screaming.

I heard a jingle like keys coming from the
other side of the front door. Had Megan decided to come home after all? I tried to make use of my legs, but sleeping on the hardwood floor had stiffened my entire body.

I glanced at the clock. It was three in the morning. I st
ood up just as the front door burst open.

I grabbed the wall behind me to keep my knees from buckling. There, standing in the doorway,
disheveled and looking like a god from hell, was Adam.

“
No…no, don’t you dare do this to me.” I shook my head back and forth. My mind was spiraling, my anxiety dialed to high. I wanted him near, yet couldn’t run far enough away. I wasn’t ready to go round two with him. My home was my sanctuary. And he’d plowed right into it.

“
You can’t break in here. This is my home. Y-you told
me
to leave…you can’t take this from me, too.”

His eyes were fierce, like lighting striking the ocean at daybreak. He stomped toward me, not stopping until he cupped my face in his hands. Had I
not known better, I could have sworn relief washed over his face.

“
I didn’t break in, I have a key,” he rasped.

I pushed away from him.
I wasn’t in the mood for whatever it was he was dishing out. Sarcasm, hate, love…I couldn’t tell the difference and didn’t want to find out it was the latter.

“
Are you okay?”

I scowled at him with my raw eyes.
“No. I’m not okay. What are you doing to me? You throw me out of your place just so you can stalk me at mine?” I shook my head, tears beginning to fall again. “I’ll never know peace from you, will I?”

He lo
oked down at me, an intense frown bending his brow. “No, you won’t. Because I’ll never leave you, and I’ll never let you leave me.”

“
I don’t believe you,” I whispered. “You
did
let me go.”

“
No,” he snapped. “Listen to me, Katelyn. I made a mistake. I didn’t mean it.”

His voice sounded so far away. The only thing I could focus on
was the slow beating pulse in my ears. With every breath my body grew weaker. Adam was my drug, and though he stood right in front of me, I knew I should run away or suffer the withdrawal. And it would be painful.

“
I gave you everything I was,” I whispered. “It still wasn’t enough.”

“
That’s not true,” he grated. Still cupping my face, he forced me to look at him. He ran his thumbs beneath my eyelids, tracing the tears away. “I want to be a better man for you, Katelyn. I didn’t—” His voice caught and I saw his crystalline eyes gloss over. “I have never had to share my past with someone outside of a shrink. I was caught off guard by Roger at dinner and I didn’t think you could ever look at me again.”

“
I love you, Adam.”

“
That’s what confuses me. You’ve known for a while…about the things that happened when I was young, but you still stay by me. What happened…what he did to me…I never wanted you to know the kind of shame and hate I carried for myself.”

Before I
could think better of it, I wrapped my arms around his neck and tugged him into me. “I’m sorry you suffer. Nothing could ever make me think less of you. You own my soul, Adam. I wish I could take the pain for you.” I backed away enough to look him in the eye. “But I can’t handle your rejection. Throwing me away…”

“
I’m sorry, Katelyn. God, how I’m sorry. I wanted you gone because I didn’t want
you
to look at
me
. Not the other way around. I pushed you away. I’ll never forgive myself for that. As soon as you left, I knew the mistake I had made.” He tilted my chin up. “It took me all of five minutes to run after you.”

“
It took you hours to get here,” I argued.

He took a deep breath and took several steps backward.
“I know words aren’t enough. I would have gotten here sooner, but I had to wake up and harass my psychiatrist to get this before I showed up here.” Adam took a manila envelope from inside his wool coat and handed it to me.

“
Outside of my shrink, you’re the only one who’s ever seen this. Who will ever see this.”

My hands were shaking but I opened the envelope. Documents, records, photos. A big pile of Adam. I saw the picture of Adam as a young boy right before he went into
the custody of the state. His eyes were stark and deathly looking.

“
Oh, Adam.”

“
It’s all there. The last twenty years of my life. And it’s all yours, if you’ll still have me.”

My chest felt tight and my stupid eyes wouldn
’t seem to stop dripping. “You don’t have to do this.”

“
I want to. Because I trust you, Katelyn. And for you…I’ll try.”

A watery smile split my face. My
tortured, brave man. He was trying. I knew dealing with this, airing your darkest secrets to another, left you vulnerable and terrified. But he trusted me. Just like I trusted him.

“
From the moment I met you, Katelyn, I knew you were it for me.”

He took my left hand and placed a small piece of paper in it.

“Dinner was ruined. I had planned to ask you something, but I realize that now is not the right time. I do want you to know, though, that I will not give you up. Whatever I have to do to make this right, I will. But I want you to realize that I mean what I say.”

I looked at the folded piece of paper he
’d handed me. Setting the file down, I used both hands to unfold it.

It was some kind of receipt from a Lorraine S
chwartz. I heaved and my stomach twisted when I saw the price for a…ring…written down.

I tried to form words, but I couldn
’t. So I clamped a palm over my mouth. Another tear slid down my cheek when I read the date of this invoice.

It was dated the same day I
’d met Adam.

My gaze snapped to him.

“I knew, Katelyn. I just want you to know that. Know that I have no intention of letting you go.”

“
A-are you proposing to me with a piece of paper?” I was in so much shock, I didn’t know what to do, or how to react.

He grinned.
“Kind of.” He pulled a massive diamond ring out of his pocket and sank to his knees. “Or I could use this.” He lifted the shiny ring in one hand and gripped my hip in the other.

“
Katelyn. I’ve never bowed to anyone, but I will gladly live the rest of my life on my knees before you, if you’ll be mine. I wanted you to know that this isn’t a game, or a ploy to get you back. This is real. And it has been since the moment I saw you.”

His thumb rubbed over my hipbone.
“Katelyn Gunn, will you marry me?”

I sank to
my knees and kissed him with all the breath I had left. “Yes,” I whispered between sobbing and peppering his mouth with kisses over and over. “Yes.”

He wrapped me in his arms.
“I love you, Katelyn.” And I believed him. Our pasts couldn’t hurt us anymore, because we had let them go, and reached for each other instead. Yes, we still had a long way to go and a lot to deal with once the light of day hit, but for now, we were happy.

And there, on our knees, submitt
ing to one another, Adam and I finally found our middle ground.

The End

Visit
www.JoyaRyan.com
for all available books and get a look at what is coming out next!

“Are you sure you’re okay?” I clutched the phone to my ear and waited for Megan to respond.

“
Yeah, I’m better. I thought you were staying at Adam’s tonight?”

I bit my bottom lip to keep from telling her how wrong things had gone,
asking instead, “Where are you?”

“
I’m going out of town for a few days. I need some time to think. I went over to Grace and Tim’s. I talked to Grace. Everything is in the open. Tim, Brian, all of it.”

“
A-are you okay? You don’t sound upset,” I said, trying to keep the trembling out of my voice.

I hugged my knees to my chest and sat in the middle of my living
room floor. My world was collapsing around me. After the fight with Adam, I’d hailed a cab and barely remembered the ride home. My eyes were swollen and I could hardly see through the tears.

“
I don’t know what’s going to happen with Grace and Tim, but it didn’t look good when I left.”

“
Was Simon there?”

“
No, Tim mentioned something about him staying with Tim’s mom for a few days.”

That was good. Tim was a poor excuse for a human
being, but his mother was a nice lady. Simon would be okay staying with her for a little bit until this mess could be sorted out.

“
Are you okay?” Megan asked. I put my palm over the receiver to keep the hiccup of despair out of my voice.

“
Yeah. Fine. Keep me posted, okay? I know getting some space can be good…”

“
I’ll check in with you. I’m going to visit my mom upstate. I’ll see you next week, okay?”

“
Okay,” I whispered.

The line went dead. I looked around my cold apartment. Alone. I was completely alone. Even the dysfunctional world I
’d had before Adam was in shambles. There would be no picking up. No starting over.

Because there was nothing left to salvage.

~

There was a loud poundi
ng in my ears and I my head felt like it was being pushed between two planks of wood.

My eyes hurt. I tried to open them and was greeted by a fog of leftover tears. The booming
sound rang out again and it took me a moment to realize I was on the living room floor. It was still dark out, so I must not have been asleep that long.

I sat up
. Every bone creaked and whined. I palmed my temple and willed the rising headache to go away. It was no use. Every muscle was aching. Every brain cell was screaming.

I heard a jingle like keys coming from the
other side of the front door. Had Megan decided to come home after all? I tried to make use of my legs, but sleeping on the hardwood floor had stiffened my entire body.

I glanced at the clock. It was three in the morning. I st
ood up just as the front door burst open.

I grabbed the wall behind me to keep my knees from buckling. There, standing in the doorway,
disheveled and looking like a god from hell, was Adam.

“
No…no, don’t you dare do this to me.” I shook my head back and forth. My mind was spiraling, my anxiety dialed to high. I wanted him near, yet couldn’t run far enough away. I wasn’t ready to go round two with him. My home was my sanctuary. And he’d plowed right into it.

“
You can’t break in here. This is my home. Y-you told
me
to leave…you can’t take this from me, too.”

His eyes were fierce, like lighting striking the ocean at daybreak. He stomped toward me, not stopping until he cupped my face in his hands. Had I
not known better, I could have sworn relief washed over his face.

“
I didn’t break in, I have a key,” he rasped.

I pushed away from him.
I wasn’t in the mood for whatever it was he was dishing out. Sarcasm, hate, love…I couldn’t tell the difference and didn’t want to find out it was the latter.