I walk immediately over to my suitcase start yanking dresses off of hangers and shoving them and anything else I can find into the suitcase, hysterical tears spitting out every chance they can.
“Uh-uh. No way! Don’t you dare, Rylee!” Beckett shouts from behind me as he sees what I’m doing. I just ignore him, throwing, shoving, stuffing. Beckett’s protests continue, and I yelp out as I feel his arms circle around me from behind me, holding my arms down, trying to tame my hysterics.
He just holds me awkwardly, hushing me like a tantruming child who needs soothing. He embraces me as I break down and succumb to the tears and the heartbreak of the day. And to what will never be.
“I thought you guys were trying to figure this out. Could figure this out. You’re both miserable fucks apart.”
“And we’re miserable when we’re together as well,” I whisper. Tears he can’t see fill my eyes again, and I just shake my head at him. “He needs to concentrate, Becks. I’m…this…is a distraction he doesn’t need right now.”
“That’s a fucking brilliant statement if I’ve ever heard one…but what does that mean, Rylee?”
I wipe a fallen tear off my cheek with the back of my hand. “I don’t know…I feel like I don’t know anything anymore…I just need some space from him to be able to think and figure it out.”
“So what? You’re going to pack up and leave without him knowing? Sneak out?” He breathes out as he paces the room in front of me. “Because that’s just so much better, right?”
“Beckett…I can’t…” I mumble, “I just can’t…” I grab the handle of my suitcase and start to pick it up.
Beckett yanks it out of my hand, stepping around me to grab both of my shoulders and gives them a hard shake. “Don’t you dare, Rylee. Don’t you fucking dare!” he shouts at me, anger now firing in his veins. “You want to leave him?”
“Becks…”
“Don’t you Becks me. On any other day I’d tell you that you’re just as big of a fucking coward as he is…that both of you are so goddamned stubborn you’d rather cut off your noses to spite your faces. You didn’t work your shit out? I get it. I really do. It happens.” He sighs loudly, releasing me and walking a few feet from me before turning around and getting back in my face. “But by you walking out, Rylee, you’re fucking with my team—my driver—this race—my best friend. So suck it up and pretend for me. At least pretend until the race starts. That’s all I ask. You owe me that much, Rylee.” When he speaks again, he’s eerily calm and full of spite. “Because if you can’t do this for me, so help me God, Rylee, if something happens to him…it’s on you!”
I swallow loudly, my lips falling lax as I look at Beckett, a one-man army on a mission. “Look, Ry, I know it’s easier for you to do it this way…to leave this way…but if you love him—if you ever loved him? You’ll do this for me. If you leave, it’s too dangerous…I can’t have Colton flying close to two hundred miles an hour tomorrow with his head focused in la-la land thinking about you instead of being focused on the goddamn track.” He grabs my suitcase and sets it back down.
All I can do is look at him through blurred eyes and with a hurting heart. He’s so right on every level, and yet I don’t know if I can find it within me to pretend. To act like I’m unaffected when the sight of Colton causes my breath to hitch and heart to twist. When we continually tear each other apart and purposely hurt one another. I cry out a strangled sound, hating the woman that I’ve become in the last few days. Hating Colton. Just wishing that I could be numb again even though it felt so damn good to feel again. But if I can’t have him—have my beautifully damaged man—then I’d rather be numb than live in this endless abyss of pain.
Beckett sees the hysteria surfacing—sees the moment that I realize how much I actually love Colton and the devastation I foresee on the horizon—and mutters, “Motherfucker!” in exasperation at being the one left to tend to my irrationality before calmly walking me over to the bed and pushing my shoulders down. “Sit!” he orders.
He squats down in front of me, the motion much like a parent does to a child, and it makes me realize what a good guy Beckett really is. He reaches out and puts his hands on my knees, looking me squarely in the eye.
“He fucked things up, right?” All I can do is nod my head, my throat clogged with emotion. “You love him still, correct?”
I tense at the question. The answer comes so willingly into my mind that I know even though I love him—that loving him will most likely bring me a truckload of continual hurt—it’s just not enough. “Beckett…I can’t keep doing this to myself.” I lower my head, shaking it as my breath hitches again.
“Remember when I told you that Colton was going to push you away to prove a point?” I nod my head, listening to him but really just wanting to be by myself, wanting to take my suitcase with items sticking out of it at all angles and make a mad dash to the airport—back to structure and predictability and a life without Colton.
And that thought alone robs me of every emotion possible.
Beckett squeezes my knees to get me to focus back on him. “Right now is that time, Rylee. You need to push away everything in your head. Clear all of the assumptions out and think with your heart. Just your heart, okay?”