I wasn’t going to ever really be okay again, I didn’t think anyone that had been through what I had in the last few months would, but I wasn’t scared of Rule and almost being raped by a lunatic had given me a whole new perspective on what was missing from my life and what I was going to do differently from this point on. I wanted to fidget with my hair, but it was snaggled together with dried blood and who knew what else and it wasn’t like there was going to be any fixing my face. Rule was just going to have to face the horror show full on and deal with it.

I was messing around on my phone, returning texts from Cora and surprisingly most of Rule’s boys, letting them know I was fine when the door opened and he came in. I looked up and watched him so I saw the initial anger that was stamped all across his handsome face quickly bleed into horror at the sight of me all battered and bruised. I saw his chest inflate and deflate as he sucked in an audible breath and moved to the end of the bed. We stared at each other in silence and I noticed absently that his hair was still normal and unruly as well as it’s natural dark brown color. I still hated it because it made him look like a stranger. His eyes looked wild and too big for his face; a full blown blizzard was sweeping out of the cold depths. He was messing with his lip ring like he did when he was nervous and I realized if I didn’t say anything there was a good chance we would spend the rest of the afternoon watching each other warily.

“You didn’t have to come. I’m fine just a little banged up.”

His big hands tightened on the end of the bed and I watched as the snake head bend and flexed with his aggravation.

“I wanted to see for myself that you were alright. You could have called to let me know you were hurt.”

I refused to look away from him and he seemed infuriated each time his gaze landed on another part of me that was broken. “Well considering you haven’t spoken to me in almost a month it didn’t seem very logical to let you know what was going on.”

His mouth tightened. “You’re right. I should have been there. You shouldn’t have been alone.”

I sighed and clenched my hands in the blanket. “You’re right, you should’ve been there but not because Gabe is crazy and not because I needed protecting from him, you should have been there because you cared about me as much as I care about you but that isn’t the case. No one is to blame for this mess but Gabe, he’s sick and broken and chances are even if someone had been with me he still would have gone all stalker crazy so it is what it is. I don’t hold anyone accountable but him, besides my body is already on the mend it’s my heart that still feels like it went through a food processer.”

“Shaw,” he tried to interject something but I held up my good hand and looked him right in the eye. “I’m tired of my love not being good enough. I thought when this started with you I would be okay with whatever it was you were willing to give, thought I could love you enough for the both of us since I had been suffocating in it for so long, but I realize now that I deserve more.” I blinked back tears that snuck up on me. “I deserve it all because I’m willing to give it all. I would have worked through the darkness with you, Rule. What I won’t do is watch you walk away from me every time something happens that has the potential to hurt you. I’m sorry I never talked to you about Remy but I told you all time and time again we weren’t a couple, you had the undeniable proof on my birthday, you should be mad at him for keeping it a secret, not me. You were right all along; we don’t trust each other enough to ever have had a chance at making this work. I think I wanted it too much and you didn’t want it enough.”

I was surprised to see moisture in his eyes when I was done talking. The only time I had ever seen Rule cry was at Remy’s funeral. He reached out a hand like he was going to lay it on my leg but retracted it before he ever made contact.

“Shaw what if I did love you?” His voice was just a hint above a whisper. “Seeing you like this it makes me want to murder Davenport with my bare hands, but it makes something deep inside me hurt. I’ve missed you these last few weeks but I was also furious with you, I just couldn’t get the two to ever line up.”

I gave my head a sad little shake and let the tears gathered in my eyes fall. “What isn’t enough. I’ve spent my entire life trying to live up to unreachable expectations, you were the only thing I ever wanted for myself and once I got you, you felt like you had to entirely change who you were in order to be with me, I refuse to put the same kind of expectations I always struggled with on someone else, even if I didn’t ask that of them. Parts of us are great together, Rule but other parts of us just don’t work. All this,” I waved my good hand over my reclining form. “Will knit itself back together. It’ll be fine and we’ll just go back to whatever it was we were doing before.” I made sure that he understood I was talking about everything from the gash on my head to my abused heart. I would get over him, there just wasn’t another option.

“You’ve always been in my life Shaw. We should’ve been able to make this work.” I wanted to shrug but I only had one working shoulder so that wasn’t an option. Instead I swiped at my tears with the back of a hand and offered him up a shaky smile.

“There are a lot of things that maybe should have gone one way and didn’t. I know most people thought you and I being together was a long shot anyway so we should just be grateful for what we had.”

“I feel like I’m letting you down, letting everyone down and for once it’s bothering the hell out of me. I just don’t know how to work around what’s going on up here.” He tapped his temple with a finger.

I was crying in earnest now and it was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that if he could just love me, just learn to let me love him the way he deserved, the way I desperately wanted to then it would all be fine but that wasn’t the case. we needed to believe in each other, needed to trust that we were enough without trying to be other people in order to be together and that just wasn’t happening so I closed my eyes and for once was the one to shut him out and fall into the dark.

“Some things just aren’t meant to be. I’m getting tired can you send a nurse in on your way out. I think the pain killers are starting to wear off.”

“Shaw, I’m so sorry.”

“Me too Rule, really I am too.” Because I had spent a lifetime in love with him and as much as I wanted to be strong and pretend I was going to put it all behind me, letting go of what I felt for him was going to be the hardest thing I ever did. We stared at each other for a long, sad minute then he turned on his boot and left. When Ayden came back in the room I was crying inconsolably and she had to crawl up on the bed to wrap her arms around me. I cried longer than I ever had before, I cried until there was nothing left inside me to cry out and when I was all done I let my best friend hold me as I fell apart. The nurse Rule sent in came in with a pain killer but when she saw the state I was in she turned right back around and came back with a sedative.

I spent one more day in the emergency room but when I got out I realized there was no way on this earth I was going back to my apartment with Gabe out on bail restraining order or not. Luckily Cora had an extra couple rooms open in the house she rented in the Washington Park area because both of her roommates had recently got engaged to each other and had moved out to get their own place so Ayden dropped me off at her place and returned a couple hours later with all my essentials packed up for an extended stay. She said the property management company was working on getting the place cleaned up but even with that it still gave her the creeps to be there alone so it didn’t take more than a week for her to ask Cora if she could crash in the last room at her house as well. They even agreed to let us break the lease without paying a penalty because of what happened to me. Being around the girls did wonders for both my mental health and my physical state. They never let me get down and someone was always there to remind me that everything I was feeling was temporary. They also refused to let me freak out over pressing charges against Gabe.

Things were moving fast and a few times it looked his father was going to use every trick he had to get Gabe off, but magically Alex Carsten had stepped in and now Gabe was on an ankle monitor and being charged with not only aggravated assault but breaking and entering as well. I didn’t for one second think that was a favor my mother called in, but Rule and I were back to radio silence so I never called to ask him or to thank him. Of course the Davenport’s had the best defense lawyer in town on the payroll, but all signs pointed to a slam dunk for me so I tried to stay positive.

I was refusing to talk to either of my parents. In fact I hadn’t told either one of them I moved and I had changed my phone number within hours of leaving the hospital. The fact of the matter was I had nothing to say to either of them, all the things I had said to Rule held true for them as well. I deserved better and if they weren’t willing to give me the love I showed them without restrictions or demands then I didn’t want them in my life. I knew my mom was struggling with the fact that she had to be accountable for the fact that she ultimately is the one that let Gabe corner me alone, but like I told Rule the only person I blamed was Gabe. It was more important to me that she recognize that she should have never pushed him on me when I told her I was in love with someone else in the first place. If they couldn’t figure out how to love and appreciate me for me then I would make do without them.

Ayden and I were settling into a new routine and we both adored Cora. It was nice to be living in a house rather than an apartment and as each day went by it got a little easier to breathe around the hole in my chest where my heart had once been. It had only been two weeks but it felt like a lifespan we had been apart. This time faking it to make it was so much harder, maybe because I knew for real it was the end but there was no fake smiling, no pretending to glide through life. I was struggling and I was struggling hard. I missed him. I loved him. I couldn’t have him and it was killing me in an entirely different way than when I had loved him from afar without him knowing it. Cora was back to keeping all talk of work and the guys at bay but every now and then she would let something about him slip and every time it felt like a shard of glass in an open wound. It should have made me feel better that he didn’t sound like he was doing much better than me but it didn’t. We both deserved happiness, it just sucked that we couldn’t seem to find it together.

It was a couple days before Saint Patrick’s Day which not only fell on a weekend this year but also happened to be Rule’s birthday. The girls had decided that instead of sitting around being sullen and grousing about things that we needed to go out and have fun. I didn’t want to go, I mean I really didn’t want to go and not only because my face wasn’t entirely pretty again but because I didn’t think I could handle being in a crowd just yet. I was pretty sure it was going to be an awful time and that I was going to have zero fun but because I loved them I let them bagger me into agreeing to go and to my surprise after a few martinis at an out of the way lounge Cora knew about I relaxed and actually having a good time, strike that it was a fantastic time that I totally needed. Getting up for school the next morning was awful and I was tempted to skip but I had missed so much because of the attack that I couldn’t afford to.