Page 79 of Stolen in Sin City

Sarah, on the other hand, her loss was the kind of death capable to kill me on the inside for the rest of my life. It didn’t matter how much money I threw at therapy; it was only capable of cracking the surface when it came to healing me completely from the inside out.

My phone continued to vibrate against the hard wood of the coffee table. Even if someone cared enough to check in on me, I couldn’t help the fact that the last thing I wanted was anyone butting in on my business.

Andi heard the entire thing, and I knew she had to be worried. But she didn’t deserve to be brought down by my past. She’d made so much progress of her own with her new job and her brother back in her life. She’d became this entirely new woman from the person I saw dancing in that Denver night club with her friends. The last thing she needed was me to take a wrecking ball to her growth and shatter it with my past that never really went away in the first place.

My past would always be there, lingering like a ghost until it was finally ready to come to light. And when it appeared, the last thing I wanted to do was bring her down with me. This was my battle to face and my battle alone. I’d gotten through it in the past once before, but this time, it felt different. This time, the weight of the world held me down, and I couldn’t find a reason to get up.

Every time I came and went from the arena, I couldn’t help but glance up at the owner’s suite in hopes of seeing Hunter. I remained hopeful that even if he didn’t want anything to do with me, I’d look up at the box and see him watching the game with a smile on his face.

Even though deep down, I knew Hunter wasn’t smiling. Sue me for having a little bit of faith in something.

It had been two weeks to be exact. Two weeks since I left his house. Two weeks since I last saw him, kissed him, and told him I loved him. Fourteen whole days and three of them with unanswered texts.

After eleven days passed without a single answered text, I’d heard the message loud and clear. He didn’t want my help. He didn’t need me as much as I hoped he would. Hunter needed to heal in the way he thought was best, and I assumed, much like the time from his past, he needed to do it alone.

I never did spot him up in the owner’s suite. Which could only mean one thing … there was a very likely chance he hadn’t been at work, and I wasn’t the only one to notice.

Carter tracked me down before a game the other day and asked me where Hunter had been. Turns out, he hadn’t heard from him either and assumed we were shacked up like two lovebirds. I feared if I were brave enough to tell him what actually happened, I wouldn’t be able to compose myself at work.

I’d only had this job for a couple of months now, and I still wanted to make sure I was doing my best to impress those around me. Hunter had been the one to secure this position for me, but I planned to fight like hell to keep it. The last thing I wanted was to be caught hiding out in the family bathroom while having a mental breakdown.

Keeping it brief, I ended up telling Carter we had a falling out, and he hadn’t been answering my text messages either. This wasn’t a total lie since I’d been trying to get ahold of him for days. But I did leave out the harsh truth of it all since it wasn’t my business to tell in the first place.

Over the time I attempted to get ahold of him, my messages were a rollercoaster of emotions that I couldn’t even find a bone in my body to blame him for leaving me on read.

As I approached my car after the Neon won against their division rivals, I locked myself inside the silent metal box and pulled up my text thread with Hunter. I scrolled back to where the texts started after the morning after he kicked me out. I slept like absolute shit, woke up somewhere in the early hours of the morning before the sun even came up, and told him I was here if he needed me.

For a few days, each text grew more and more erratic as my emotions became stronger.

Scrolling back to the beginning, I couldn’t help the nauseating feeling sitting at the pit of my stomach as I took in each message getting crazier than the next.

Okay, so maybe they weren’t crazy by any means, but I’d never been the type of girl to chase a man when things went south. No matter the reason. And clearly, I had no idea how to do this whole relationship—or breakup—thing since I had chosen some of the absolute worst times to text him.

Plastered at two in the morning? Yeah, sounds like a great idea to text the man who you gave the entirety of your heart to.

Right before bed when my mind wouldn’t shut off even if I tried out my new sleeping pills? Fuck, Andi, that sounds like an amazing idea.

Wait, or how about those times I was sitting at family dinner with an empty chair by my side and all of my friends were asking me where Hunter was, only for me to be too chicken shit to tell them the real reason because I was embarrassed as hell in the way I’d been rejected? Yup, you bet your ass I texted him then, too.