Page 131 of The Auction
But the words make the fight drain out of me in pieces—anger first, then the strength to keep pretending I’m fine. My shoulders sag, my hands go slack. “None of it was real,” I manage, voice low, raw.
My steps falter backwards until I hit the post behind me. I slide down it, sitting on the floor and letting the weight of her dismissal crush me.
Lucian waits only a second before he’s kneeling next to me. “Tell me what happened.”
“It wasn’t fucking real,” I bite out, and then it’s like everything I’ve been holding together unravels at once. My breath catches hard. “None of it was. She—” I cut myself off, my throat tight, “—I thought she felt the same. I told her I loved her.”
My eyes burn and tears fall heavy down my cheeks.
“She was only using me and I’m the fucking idiot who didn’t see it.”
“Jaxon.” He says my name the way you’d talk to someone standing on a ledge.
“She fucking told me to go fuck myself and then she blocked me.” My vision blurs, and I hate it. I look at my hands, red and shaking, then I ball them into fists and cover my eyes.
“How did I get this so wrong?”
Lucian doesn’t say anything for a while. After a moment, he sits next to me. I cry. The pain leaking out of me with no way to stop it.
“I don’t think that’s true, buddy.” Lucian’s voice is low. Either uncomfortable or unsure if I’m still a bomb ready to explode. “Any idiot could see she was in love with you the night of the auction. And you were in love with her.”
He places a hand on my shoulder. My tears are beginning to slow and I wipe my nose on the back of my hand.
“Iamin love with her.” I nearly whisper it.
“Then figure it out.” He says it like it’s so simple. “You said there was something she wasn’t telling you. Maybe there is more to that than you know.”
My heart is pounding. My mind starting to rush back to me.
“You really going to tell me you’re going to let one little blocked number stop you?”
That makes me look at him. He cocks half a grin but it’s not out of humor. It’s a challenge.
“Step back,” he says evenly. “Look at it again when your head’s clear. You’ll find what you missed.”
I swallow hard trying to ease whatever is making my throat constrict.
“Then what?”
“Then you go get your fucking girl.” He pauses a beat. “And you tear the whole goddamn world apart if you have to.”
The wind is screaming in my ears, the roar of the bike swallowing everything else. I’m not even sure how long I’ve been riding—just gunning it down the open stretch, leaning into the curves, letting the speed strip me bare. The faster I go, the less room there is in my head for her words.
I don’t mean to end up here.
The bike idles to a stop at the edge of the old airport, the place I brought her. Our spot. The one I’ve never shared with anyone else. The one where, for a little while, I thought I’d found something I didn’t even realize I was missing.
My chest feels like it’s going to split right down the middle.
It couldn’t have been fake.
You can’t fake that.
You can’t fake heat so sharp it burns through you, or the kind of fire that makes you forget the rest of the world exists. You can’t fake the quiet after, when her head was on my shoulder andI finally—finally—felt like I wasn’t just existing anymore. I felt whole. Whole, after years of being nothing but splintered pieces.
My phone chimes.
The sound snaps me out of it, my gaze dragging to the screen.
