“The whole purpose was for us not to have to depend on each other –”

“We’re not depending on each other! I’m here because I want to be! I don’t need you the way I did before, Leah. I want you, desperately.” His breaths were ragged, his gaze tearing through me. “How can you lie to yourself right now? Where do you draw the strength to let me walk away? I’m giving you what you always wanted. I’m giving you my heart on a fucking platter, and you’re too stuck in the past to accept it.”

When I didn’t respond, he scoffed. “You really have changed.”

“What did you expect would happen?” I retorted, staring hard at him. “You really thought I was living my life here, never forgetting you, always keeping my heart open in case you came back –”

“No,” he cut in, “I didn’t think you were waiting for me, but I hoped you were. Do you really want us to go our separate ways again, have empty fucks all over again, and continue this denial shit up?”

“I’m just not ready!” I stressed. “I’m not ready to feel pain again like before! That’s the truth, Carter.”

He ran his teeth over his bottom lip, another surge of anger tearing through his features.  He dragged a hand through his hair, before the defeat shone in his eyes. He got up and left the bathroom. I almost wanted to call him back in, but I stopped myself short.

I didn’t move, not for a long time. I buried my face into my arms, thinking about everything he said. When did my life get so complicated? I wanted simple again. I wanted loneliness because it didn’t fuck me up like he did.

When he returned a half hour later, he simply opened the door a crack and, in a guarded voice, said, “Time to go.”

Dazedly, I gathered my things and put my shoes on, all the while avoiding his eyes. He waited by the door, glancing out the blinds before turning back to me with this lifeless look on his face.

“Ready?” he asked when I finished.

I nodded.

Grabbing the hat off the night table – the same damn hat he fucked me with – he set it over my head, hardly looking at me.

In a monotone voice, he said, “When we go out, don’t speak. Just look down, and I’ll lead the way. I won’t let them touch you. Stick by me and nothing will happen.”

I nodded again.

He took me gently by the hand and put his other hand on the door knob. “We’re going to go straight through the crowd and into the car waiting for us. Never mind about checking out. I’ll have all of that sorted. Easy?”

“Yeah,” I replied. Anxiety made my stomach twist, and I almost pushed him away right then to seek the safety of the bathroom again. Somehow, I pulled it together.

He noticed my twist of emotions, and he sighed, shutting his eyes for a moment to breathe. He was fighting that wall again, but it came down.

“Don’t listen to a word they say,” he added kindly, looking about my face with concern and…affection. “It might get ugly, and the Leah I know doesn’t take ugly, but you’re going to have to.”

“Okay, I will,” I promised.

He opened the door a moment later, and nothing could prepare me for the chaos that unfolded. A man barged into the motel with a camera in hand, and he made it only a step before Carter shoved him harshly out the door. The man fell on his back, still desperately taking pictures as we stepped over him. Carter’s grip tightened around me, and I could understand why. There were people as far as the eye could see, and we were shoving through a bunch of them. I saw faces everywhere. Fans were screaming, men with cameras were shouting so many questions, it made my head dizzy.

“Is this your new love, Carter?”

“Is it true you’ve cheated on Molly?”

“Will you be staying in your hometown long?”

“Is it the end of Fatal Rebellion? Is that why you’ve all gone separate ways?”

Then there were the fans. Angry women, pointing at me, shrieking obscenities.

“Heartbreaker!”

“Whore!”

I felt anger, wanting nothing more than to wrangle these bitches to the ground. I kept myself in check, though, remembering my promise not even twenty seconds ago. I didn’t need a catfight under my belt, but god, they sure loved to provoke it, didn’t they?

Carter navigated through the crowd, looking down, saying nothing. I did the same, keeping my eyes glued to my sneakers, painfully aware of how horrible I looked. My hair fell over parts of my face, and I could only pray it was enough to keep my identity hidden.

We approached a black BMW, and I knew Rome was inside. Carter opened the passenger door and I quickly climbed in. Looking toward the front, Rome sat behind the wheel, dressed in a hat and sunglasses. He frowned at me in the rear view mirror, shaking his head in frustration.

The crowd had followed us out to the car, and Carter ended up shoving more people out of the way to get inside. Just as he turned, a hand grabbed at him, and flashing lights of the man’s camera went off in Carter’s face. I heard Carter curse as he turned and sent a punch across the man’s face.

“Don’t fucking touch me!” I heard him growl out.

Huh, so much for taking the ugly.

Without waiting, he slipped into the car, panting hard, stretching out the hand he used to punch the man. The man himself had a crowd surrounding him, taking pictures of him sprawled on the ground with his hand clutched to the side of his face.

This had escalated beyond anything I could imagine.

“Fucking shit!” hollered Rome as he attempted to manoeuver through the crowd, honking on the horn at least a dozen times as people continued to take pictures and scream. “This is fucked up, man.”

“You shouldn’t have left the fucking bodyguards behind,” Carter retorted, staring out the window with flared nostrils.

“Oh, so it’s my fault, huh? I told you not to leave the goddamn fucking house!”

I tensed as they argued, feeling uncomfortably out of place. When Rome finally managed to get away, he pressed down hard on the gas and took off down the road, going way over the speed limit. My body harshly fell back as he took it over a hundred kilometres an hour.

“You need to calm down,” Carter told him. “I know we fucked up, alright? Just calm the fuck down.”

“I wanted one visit with my parents without one single incident,” Rome fumed. “The dickheads out there had only just stopped waiting outside their house, and now they’ll be all over it again! How do you think my parents are going to take their privacy being violated once more now that everyone knows we were here? And now it’s due to something that could have completely been avoided had you not fucking left the house! How hard is it to stay under one roof? You couldn’t just call Leah over? You had to do a runner? They’re going to take to the news with this. You’re going to get smeared –”