He didn’t even leave me alone to get my emotions in check. He crushed me, and I was hardly able to stand without swaying. My head felt light, my body weak and slow, my mind a scrambled mess. And all I could do was cry. Cry like a child.

It took me minutes to walk out of that room.

Minutes to grab my things.

Minutes that seemed to drag into what felt like an infinite amount of lifetimes.

All the while I felt him staring at me in the darkness, and while he was half a room away we might as well have been on different planets in completely different galaxies.

I didn’t say a word, nor did I turn back to look at him one last time. I was too ashamed of myself. I wanted to get away and crawl into a hole and die if it meant forgetting my betrayal.

Stepping out of the apartment was the hardest thing I had ever done.

And the worst bit of all was never getting the chance to say goodbye.

*****

I didn’t make it home. I pulled over on the side of the road and lay in the passenger seat of my car. I sobbed my brains out, suffering in the heat and parched beyond belief. I watched the time slowly tick on by. Watched the night sky dissolve. Blinding light followed; another day born, another opportunity in one’s ordinary life to either triumph or fail.

After some point I’d exhausted my mind and stopped thinking. I felt like I was in stasis. My being stopped. I just existed for a few hours before the sounds of cars jolted me into the now. Life all around me swelled and it was time I caught up to it.

I sat up and climbed back into the passenger seat. I drove the rest of the way home, numb and cold on the inside. This was a different sort of heart break. The acute kind that wasn’t shy to stick its horrid fangs into my heart and suck it dry.

I pulled into my driveway, and I should have been very fucking upset to see Hardman standing there on my porch, looking equally exhausted with his cheap suit wrinkled and sweat-ridden.

But I wasn’t.

I stepped out of my car and stared at him, no emotion on my face as I pulled my house key out and climbed up the porch steps. I passed him along the way, ignoring him to make my point that he was unwelcome.

“I’ve been trying to reach you,” he said, his voice hard and unhappy.

I didn’t reply.

“We went to the warehouse you told us about, and we found nothing, Claire. What the hell happened, darling? Did he find out?”

I kicked the door of my house open and slowly turned to him.

“What happened,” I started slowly, “is that you lied to me about everything, and you cost me everything too.”

His face didn’t give way to any emotion. He just stared at me, not skipping a beat.

“You took advantage of someone who didn’t value herself yet,” I said quietly. “You twisted a traumatic moment in her life just so you could selfishly win a case against a man you simply have no case against. You lie, you put people through hell, and you throw morals in their faces, meanwhile, you’re worse than the scum you put away.”

I took a step closer to him, so he could see my bloodshot eyes radiating with the deadness I felt inside. “So how about you go fuck yourself, Detective Hardman?”

I turned away from him and went to step inside when his hand grabbed at my arm to stop me.

“Claire,” he said, “we did what we had to do. He’s a horrible, dangerous man.”

“Yeah?” I shot him a look over my shoulder before I whipped my arm out of his grip. “Prove it.”

I walked into my house and slammed the door on his face, regretting – just a little bit – that I didn’t spit in it instead.

Then I trudged up the stairs and broke into Emily’s room. I collapsed into her bed, waking her up instantly and grabbed at her. I sobbed into her arms and held her to me.

And Emily fucking Jones, the best friend that ever lived, held me right on back.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Healing

Four months later…

Four months had done nothing to make me feel better. I still felt like shit. Like really old, disgusting, shit-from-a-Camel, kind of shit.

But I plodded on through. Because no matter how heart-broken you were, and no matter how impassioned you were with life, the world still turned. You had to keep putting one foot in front of the other and take it one day at a time.

I sobbed. I ached. I fumed. I barely ate. I couldn’t sleep.

But I still moved.

Because moving was a way of healing, and I was healing in my own way.

I drew a lot of sketches. I went out for fresh air. I went to the movies with Emily, and we ate horrible take-out every single day.

I gained five pounds.

Then I gained ten.

Then I joined the gym and tried to get into shape.

Then I barely went to the gym because, well, who the fuck hasn’t abandoned their gym membership at some point in their life?

I graduated from school and Mom was there to cheer me on. Then I joined the real world and churned out resume after resume. For every twenty resumes I got one call back, but I was yet to get a job.

And through all of this, there wasn’t a moment – not one single second – that went on by that I didn’t think of him. I yearned for Ben Costigan more and more each day, but he was gone, and I didn’t know where to.

I’d showed back up at his apartment a week after he told me to get out. I was desperate and ready to crawl on the floor, kiss his feet, and grovel to give me another chance. But it was Jamie that opened the door, and it was Jamie that told me he was gone.

“When’s he coming back?” I’d demanded.

Jamie looked at me coldly. “He’s not coming back, Claire. He’s left the country. Left the apartment to me. Left everything to me.”

“I need to get a hold of him.”

“Not happening.”

He shut the door on my face and that was the end of that.

However, that didn’t mean I was giving up. Four months may have passed since that horrible day, but I was just as in love with him as ever, and all I wanted to do was tell him.

I was full of unsaid words, and if I couldn’t voice them to his face, I would just have to pen them down on paper. So I sat down and wrote him a letter – a letter I wasn’t even sure he’d ever read.

But I needed it out of my system.

*****

Ben,

I’m not going to tell you how sorry I am. I know you don’t want to hear it. I know it’s not enough to fix this.