For Keeps. For Always. by HALEY JENNER (top rated books of all time txt) 📗

that she won’t. Or likely can’t. Henley would more likely retreat inside herself than face conflict head-on. She’d live unhappily forever just to save herself from the torment of rejection.

32

HENLEY

THREE MONTHS LATER

No one has heard from him.

Not for three months.

It’s not unusual. Shooting on location, he often disappears for months without contact.

I learned that the hard way.

I can’t stomach it.

For me, each day has dragged like time has decided to stand still.

I’ve called.

I’ve texted.

I’ve emailed.

I deserve his silence. I know that.

I fucked up.

Shit, all I’ve ever done is fuck up.

From the beginning of our tumultuous friendship until three months ago when I shattered his heart and watched him walk away from me forever.

I’m selfish enough to admit that I thought he’d always be there.

What kind of person does that make me?

I’d pull him in only to throw him away the moment I doubted his feelings.

I knew Brooks Riley loved me.

I know he loves me.

He’s proven it to me time and time again.

Yet I’ve only ever given him the very worst parts of me.

The flakiest of the flakiest.

I’m a woman so petrified of rejection, of disappointment, I’d prefer to carve a hole in my chest and remove my own heart to save the pain.

Forgetting that love and happiness also exist in this world.

Brooks was right.

I was so consumed with searching for my own happiness that I was too blind to see it when I was living it.

I was too fucking blind to see how deliriously happy I was when Brooks was in my life.

He’s a sadist. I’m certain of it. Why else would he put himself through the drama and heartache I forced upon him time and time again? Why?

Surely, love isn’t that powerful.

Surely, love isn’t so all-consuming that my worst isn’t enough to turn him away.

I fall back onto my bed, refusing to let the panic of loneliness set in.

I’ve been alone most of my life.

Yet I’d never been truly alone until Brooks walked willingly out of my life.

My cell sounds, and I ignore it, comfortable in the suffocation of my solitude.

Three months ago, I came back to the United States. Not Lake Geneva, but New York City, where Brooks and I held the promise of forever.

Traveling the world no longer held the same allure to me. Brooks was my world, and he was now out of reach, so traveling just seemed counterintuitive. I knew what I was missing. I knew what I needed—no—what I wanted, and I’d ruined any chance of that.

The universe had pushed us together time and time again, yet I’d chosen to ignore every fucking sign.

I silence my cell, the bite of the ringtone crawling up my spine in annoyance.

I couldn’t even blame my fuckups on my messed-up family. If you could even call Jacinta that, and Derrick, when he was around.

It was me.

All of it.

Brooks gave himself to me completely, in a time of hurt, and I shunned him because of the fear of my own guilt and feelings.

I flirted with the concept of Glasgow being our second chance, only to rip it away from him after I knew he still wanted me. For what? A guy I barely knew.

I took a gesture of love and intimacy and threw it back in his face like a grenade. Watching it explode with no remorse. What woman wouldn’t want a man to jump on a flight in the middle of the night because he couldn’t not be with her? Apparently my pig-headedness.

I offered him everything, promised to love him always, only to break my promise the moment it served my pride to do so.

I ran the first time we really tried and things got hard.

I told him we were broken from the start, when, in fact, it was me. I was broken, and Brooks Riley loved me through it all.

He took a chance on loving his sad and pitiful best friend.

Time and time again.

Even after I proved I wasn’t worthy.

What if that was it?

What if I threw our final chance at our happily ever after away?

What if he finds someone better to love? Someone who hasn’t shattered him the way I have. . . time and fucking time again.

I didn’t treat our love as though it was for keeps like I promised. It was for sometimes, for when it worked for me, and living with those consequences might be enough to destroy me.

I growl at my phone, wishing like hell I’d changed my number all those years ago to keep her at bay. “Jacinta,” I sigh into the line. “You do remember we agreed on going our separate ways?”

“Your father is dead.”

No prelude. No pleasantries. Just straight in with news that would emotionally buckle most people.

“You said you didn’t know who my father was.”

“I mean Derrick, Henley. Don’t be purposely daft.”

I gulp back the unwarranted emotion in my throat. “Derrick wasn’t my dad.”

My mother growls down the line. “You are being difficult. Derrick is dead. The man you called dad for seventeen years is dead.”

“Are you. . . crying?” I pull the phone away from my ear, looking at the caller ID before putting it back.

“I’m allowed to grieve my ex-husband.”

My eyes flash red. Anger and resentment and rage pause my breathing. “In what world?” I spit. “In what fucking world are you allowed to grieve a man you lied to for seventeen years?”

Her voice sounds over the line, but I cut her off before her first words are free.

“A man you dropped like a trash can the moment something better came along? You have no fucking right to grieve Derrick Wright, and you know it.”

“And you do?” she bites back.

“Likely not, no. Is that all, Jacinta?”

She goes quiet. “His lawyer contacted me.”

I wait impatiently on the line.

“You’re requested for the reading of the will.”

I scowl. “What? Why?”

“You’re being daft once again, daughter.”

“I have no reason to be at the reading of his will. I’m not entitled, nor do I want anything from the man. Not in life and certainly not in death.”

“We failed you, Henley, or so you believe. Take a little something for yourself.