: Chapter 46

I call in sick for the next three days. I actually feel sick. The pain of losing Drake is physical, not just emotional, and I am racked with a killer headache, an upside-down tummy, and extreme fatigue. I can’t eat, can’t sleep. I can’t do anything other than cry. For me, for him, for my mom. For all the suffering in the whole damn world.

He messaged me to say he’s getting me transferred to a different department at work, so at least I won’t have to face him every day. He probably told himself he was being kind. He’s not. He’s being a coward. This whole thing is about cowardice.

He might say it’s just a break, that we need to figure things out and be sure of each other, but all I see is a man running scared. And I get it—this is scary. Love is scary. Hell, life is scary. None of us can ever know what’s going to happen next, but I was willing to take the chance. To take that leap of faith. I loved him enough to risk it all.

And now, of course, I’m paying the price. I feel like I’ll never be right again. I have lost too many parts of myself in too short a time, and I’m not sure there’s enough of me left to make a whole.

I hate him for what he’s done to me, but I miss him like crazy as well. There are signs of him everywhere—the spare clothes he keeps at my place, his toothbrush in the bathroom, the damn Shibari ropes that brought us both so many hours of mutual pleasure. I should box it all up and send it over to the office. Leave his new secretary to go through it and let her try to figure out what her boss needs so much rope for. I certainly won’t be going back into that building myself ever again. I’ll find a new job, somewhere less toxic. Like a chemical waste plant.

He’s contacted me a couple of times to check on me and left messages asking me to call back, but I haven’t. He can’t have it both ways. He either wants me or he doesn’t, there are no half measures. The way I feel about Drake is all-consuming, and I won’t do this whole “taking a break” dance. If he’s not all in, then he’s all out.

I have nothing left to say to him, and I’m angry as well as broken. I feel like I’ve been tricked into loving him, that maybe I loved a mirage—because he’s not the man I thought he was.

I roll around on the bed, which I’ve been doing pretty much all day. It now feels strange to have this bed all to myself. I let myself get used to him being here and filling it with me. To him being here and filling me, in every way possible. Now, I am as empty as the bed, and I have no clue what to do about it. I wish my mom were around so I could talk to her. She would help me through this. She would take my tarnished crown, polish it up, pop it back on my head, and remind me that I am a queen. Or at the very least, her princess.

Thinking about my mom makes everything so much worse, and I’m lost in despair. I don’t know what to do with myself anymore. I don’t seem able to reach out to my friends, and I haven’t even told them what happened with Drake. I feel too hurt and too tired to discuss it. And also a touch humiliated. They helped me through everything when Chad cheated on me, and I hate the idea of them having to do it all over again. There really must be something very wrong with me for this to keep happening.

It’s just after 6:00 p.m., and I have a whole long-ass night ahead of me. That’s the other thing about this new version of my life that sucks—without my mom to care for or Drake in my world, every day seems to stretch into infinity.

A message comes in, and I pull a face when I see who it is. I’m not in the mood for Chad. I’m not in the mood for anyone.

I sit up and push greasy hair away from my face. My personal hygiene has taken a nosedive recently, and I’ve worn nothing but pajamas since I got back here. I haven’t been outside at all and have kept the drapes closed because the sunlight is too damn cheerful. The only people I’ve interacted with in the flesh are the guys who delivered the takeout I ended up throwing in the trash.

Maybe I should go out. Maybe I need to. Whatever happens with me and Drake, I have to go on living. I have to be strong. Because that’s what I promised my mom I would do, and I’m a woman who keeps her promises.