Chapter Nineteen
Sydney
Be still, heart. Please, be still.
I don’t want him to be standing here in front of
me. I don’t want him to be looking at me, wear-
ing the expression that mirrors my own feelings.
I don’t want him to hurt like I’m hurting. I don’t
want him to miss me like I’ll miss him. I don’t
want him to be falling for me like I’ve been fall-
ing for him.
I want him to be with Maggie right now. I
want him to want to be with Maggie right now, because it would make this so much easier knowing our feelings were less a reflection of each
other’s and more like a one-way mirror. If this
weren’t so hard for him, it would make it easier
for me to forget him, easier to accept his choice.
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Instead, it makes my heart hurt twice as much
knowing that our good-bye is hurting him just as
much as it’s hurting me.
It’s killing me, because nothing and no one
could ever fit my life the way I know he could. I
feel as though I’m willingly forking over my one
chance for an exceptional life, and in return, I’m
accepting a mediocre version without Ridge in it.
My father’s words ring in my head, and I’m be-
ginning to wonder if he had a point after all. A
life of mediocrity is a waste of a life.
Our eyes remain in their silent embrace for
several moments, until we both break our gaze,
allowing ourselves to take in every last thing
about each other.
His eyes scroll carefully over my face as if
he’s committing me to memory. His memory is
the last place I want to be.
I would give anything to always be in his
present.
I lean my head against my open bedroom door
and stare at his hands still gripping the
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doorframe. The same hands I’ll never see play a
guitar again. The same hands that will never hold
mine again. The same hands that will never again
touch me and hold me in order to listen to me
sing.
The same hands that are suddenly reaching for
me, wrapping themselves around me, gripping
my back in an embrace so tight I don’t know if I
could break away even if I tried. But I’m not try-
ing to break away. I’m reciprocating. I’m hug-
ging him with just as much desperation. I find
solace against his chest while his cheek presses
against the top of my head. With each heavy, un-
controlled breath that passes through his lungs,
my own breaths try to keep pace. However, mine
are coming in much shorter gasps, thanks to the
tears that are working their way out of me.
My sadness is consuming me, and I don’t even
try to hold it in as I cry huge tears of grief. I’m
crying tears over the death of something that nev-
er even had the chance to live.
The death of us.
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Ridge and I remain clasped together for sever-
al minutes. So many minutes that I’m trying not
to count, for fear that we’ve been standing here
way too long for it to be an appropriate embrace.
Apparently, he notices this, too, because he slides
his hands up my back and to my shoulders, then
pulls away from me. I lift my face from his shirt
and wipe at my eyes before looking back up at
him.
Once we make eye contact again, he removes
his hands from my shoulders and tentatively
places them on either side of my face. His eyes
study mine for several moments, and the way
he’s looking at me makes me hate myself, be-
cause I love it so much.
I love the way he’s looking at me as if I’m the
only thing that matters right now. I’m the only
one he sees. He’s the only one I see. My thoughts once again lead back to some of the lyrics he
wrote.
It’s making me feel like I want to be the only
man that you ever see.
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His gaze flickers between my mouth and my
eyes, almost as if he can’t decide if he wants to
kiss me, stare at me, or talk to me.
“Sydney,” he whispers.
I gasp and clutch a hand to my chest. My heart
just disintegrated at the sound of his voice.
“I don’t . . . speak . . . well,” he says with a
quiet and unsure voice.
Oh, my heart. Hearing him speak is almost too much to take in. Each word that meets my ears is
enough to bring me to my knees, and it’s not
even the sound of his voice or the quality of his
speech. It’s the fact that he’s choosing this mo-
ment to speak for the first time in fifteen years.
He pauses before finishing what he needs to
say and it gives my heart and my lungs a moment
to catch up with the rest of me. He sounds ex-
actly as I imagined he would sound after hearing
his laughter so many times. His voice is slightly
deeper than his laughter, but somewhat out of fo-
cus. His voice reminds me of a photograph in a
way. I can understand his words, but they’re out
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of focus. It’s as if I’m looking at a picture and the subject is recognizable, but not in focus . . . similar to his words.
I just fell in love with his voice. With the out-
of-focus picture he’s painting with his words.
With . . . him.
He inhales softly, then nervously exhales be-
fore continuing. “I need you . . . to hear this,” he
says, cradling my head in his hands. “I . . . will
never . . . regret you.”
Beat, beat, pause.
Contract, expand.
Inhale, exhale.
I just officially lost the war on my heart. I
don’t even bother verbalizing a response to him.
My reaction can be seen in my tears. He leans
forward and presses his lips to my forehead; then
he drops his hands and slowly backs away from
me. With each move he makes to pull apart from
me, I feel my heart crumbling. I can almost hear
us being ripped apart. I can almost hear his heart
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tearing in two, crashing to the floor right next to
mine.
As much as I know he should leave, I’m a
breath away from begging him to stay. I want to
fall to my knees, right next to our shattered
hearts, and beg him to choose me. The pathetic
part of me wants to beg him just to kiss me, even
if he doesn’t choose me.
But the part of me that ultimately wins is the
part that keeps her mouth shut, because I know
Maggie deserves him more than I do.
I keep my hands to my sides as he backs away
another step, preparing to turn through my bed-
room door. Our eyes are still locked, but when
my phone sounds off in my pocket, I jump,
quickly tearing my gaze from his. I hear his
phone vibrate in his pocket. The sudden interrup-
tion of both of our phones is only obvious to me
until he sees me opening my cell phone at the
same time as he pulls his out of his pocket. Our
eyes meet briefly, but the interruption of the out-
side world seems to have brought us both back to
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the reality of our situation. Back to the fact that
his heart belongs with someone else, and this is
still good-bye.
I watch as he reads his text first. I’m unable to
take my eyes off of him in order to read mine.
His expression quickly becomes tortured by
whatever words he’s reading, and he slowly
shakes his head.
He winces.
Until this very moment, I’d never seen a heart
break right before my eyes. Whatever he just
read has completely shattered him.
He doesn’t look at me again. In one swift
movement, he grips his phone tightly in his hand
as if it’s become an extension of him, and he
heads straight for the front door and swings it
open. I step out into the living room, watching
him in fear as I walk toward the front door. He
doesn’t even shut the door behind him as he takes
the stairs two at a time, jumping over the edge of
the railing to shave off another half a second in
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his frantic race to get to wherever it is he desper-
ately needs to be.
I look down at my phone and unlock the
screen. Maggie’s number shows as the last in-
coming text message. I open it and see that Ridge
and I were the only recipients. I read it carefully,
immediately recognizing the familiar string of
words she’s typed out to both of us.
Maggie: “Maggie showed up last night an
hour after I got back to my room. I was
convinced you were going to barge in and
tell her what a jerk I am for kissing you.”
I immediately walk to the couch and sit, no
longer able to support my body weight. Her
words knocked the breath out of me, sucked the
strength from my limbs, and robbed me of any
sense of dignity I thought I had left.
I try to recall the medium through which
Ridge’s words were initially typed.
His laptop.
Oh, no. Our messages.
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Maggie is reading our messages. No, no, no.
She won’t understand. She’ll only see the
words that’ll hurt. She won’t be able to see how
much Ridge has been fighting this for her.
Another text shows up from Maggie, and I
don’t want to read it. I don’t want to see our con-
versation through Maggie’s eyes.
Maggie: “I never thought it was possible
to have honest feelings for more than one
person, but you’ve convinced me of how
incredibly wrong I was.”
I turn my phone on silent and toss it onto the
couch beside me, then start crying into my hands.
How could I do this to her?
How could I do to her what was done to me,
knowing it’s the worst feeling in the world?
I’ve never in my life known this kind of
shame.
Several minutes pass, full of regrets, before I
realize the front door is still wide open. I leave
my phone on the couch and walk to the door to
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shut it, but my eyes are drawn to the cab pulled
up directly in front of our complex. Maggie is
stepping out, looking up at me as she closes the
door. I’m not at all prepared to see her, so I
quickly step back out of her sight to regain my
bearings. I don’t know if I should go hide in my
room or stay out here and try to explain Ridge’s
innocence in all of this.
But how would I do that? She obviously read
the conversations herself. She knows we kissed.
She knows he admitted having feelings for me.
As much as I can try to convince her that he did
everything he could not to feel that way, it
doesn’t excuse the fact that the guy she’s in love
with has openly admitted his feelings for
someone else. Nothing can excuse that, and I feel
like complete shit for being a part of it.
I’m still standing with the door open when she
makes it to the top of the stairs. She’s looking at
me with a stern expression. I know she’s more
than likely here for anything other than me, so I
take a step back and open the door wider. She
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looks down at her feet when she passes me, un-
able to continue the eye contact.
I don’t blame her. I wouldn’t be able to look at
me, either. In fact, if I were her, I’d be punching
me right now.
She heads to the kitchen counter, and she
drops Ridge’s laptop onto it without delicacy.
Then she heads straight to Ridge’s room. I hear
her rummaging through stuff, and she eventually
comes out with a bag in one hand and her car
keys in the other. I’m still standing motionless
with my hands on the door. She continues to keep
her eyes focused on the floor as she passes me
again, but this time, she makes a quick movement
with her hand and wipes away a tear.
She walks out the door, down the stairs, and
straight to her car, never speaking a word.
I wanted her to tell me she hated me. I wanted
her to punch me and scream at me and call me a
bitch. I wanted her to give me a reason to be
angry, because right now, my heart is breaking
for her, and I know there isn’t a damn thing I
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could say to make her better. I know this for a
fact, because I’ve recently been in the same situ-
ation that Ridge and I have just put her in.
We just made her a Sydney.
Ridge
The third and final text comes through when I
pull up to the hospital. I know it’s the final text,
because it’s pulled from the conversation I had
with Sydney less than two hours ago. It’s the
very last thing I messaged her.
Maggie: “Don’t thank me, Sydney. You
shouldn’t thank me, because I failed
miserably at trying not to fall in love with
you.”
I can’t take any more. I throw the phone into
the passenger seat and exit the vehicle, then
sprint into the hospital and straight up to her
room. I push open the door and rush inside, pre-
paring to do whatever I can to persuade her to
hear me out.
When I’m inside her room, I’m instantly
gutted.
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She’s gone.
I press my palms against my forehead and pace
the empty room, trying to figure out how I can
take it all back. She read everything. Every single conversation I’ve ever had with Sydney on my
laptop. Every single honest feeling I’ve shared,
every joke we’ve made, every flaw we’ve listed.
Why was I so damn careless?
Twenty-four years I’ve lived without ever ex-
periencing this type of hatred. It’s the type of
hatred that completely overwhelms the con-
science. It’s the type of hatred that excuses other-
wise inexcusable actions. It’s the type of hatred
that can be felt in every facet of the body and in
every inch of the soul. I’ve never known it until
this moment. I’ve never hated anything or anyone
with as much intensity as I hate myself right now.