“Her? You mean Cadence?” My heart thuds against my chest, and the elevator suddenly feels way too hot and stuffy. I shrug out of my jacket. “Nadia, can we talk? I can’t figure out what’s going on in your head. I know this sucks, but I don’t even think it’s true. And it changes nothing between us. I mean, I don’t want it to.”
The elevator stops on her floor, and she gets out. I follow her, but she stops me with a hand on my chest.
“I don’t want you to be my savior. I think Cadence needs you right now, and I don’t. So, let’s stop seeing each other.”
Stop seeing each other?
Christ.
How did we get here? Color me confused as fuck. My entire world is falling apart, and I’m not even sure what I did.
“Nadia, no. I’m not trying to be your savior.”
She’s calmed down enough to breathe and look me in the eye.
“What made you think that?”
She reaches up to cradle my cheek.
Oh, fuck. She’s definitely breaking up with me.
“Flynn, you are amazing. You have a huge heart, and you want to help everyone around you. Especially me. But I need to stand on my own. I want to be strong and not defined by what happened to me.”
“Nadia.” Her name comes out like I’m begging. Fuck.
“It sounds like right now you need to be kind and present for Cadence. I mean, you may have a baby who will need all your attention soon.”
“No!” I shake my head. “I won’t. I really don’t think she’s having my baby. I mean…”
“Flynn, you have to figure it out with her. And I need to figure myself out.” She leans up on her tiptoes and kisses my other cheek. “YA tebya lyublyu.” She says those words again that I don’t understand.
“Nadia,” I croak. Godammit.
My heart isn’t just breaking, it’s disintegrating. Falling into dust on the floor between my feet.
“I gotta go.” She turns and flees down the hall. At her apartment door, she turns and looks over her shoulder at me as she unlocks it.
I’m rooted in place, unable to move. Unable to speak.
There’s an apology in her look, but I also see a steely resolve there. And that’s when I realize.
It really is over.
Nadia has made up her mind, and she is strong. Nothing I say is going to fix this. Nothing I do will change it.
The first girl I want to keep is kicking me to the curb.
I seriously don’t know how I will ever go on.
NADIA
I manage to get in my apartment and lean against the door before I start crying.
Adrian and Kat are on the sofa watching television, Kat on his lap. They both look up in alarm when they hear my strangled wail.
I hold up a hand. “It’s okay. I broke up with Flynn. I don’t want to talk about it.” I force my leaden feet to move toward the bedroom.
“Okay,” Kat says.
Adrian hits pause on the movie they’re watching. “Am I going to kill him?”
I stop in my bedroom doorway and give him a hard look. A hard look tempered by a stream of tears. “It’s not funny. I’m tired of your violence. No. You are not going to kill him. You’re going to be very nice to him. Because he’s the nicest guy I’ve ever known.” With that, I burst into full-on sobs. I shut my door and throw myself on my bed.
I did the right thing. I know I did.
I don’t want to be the girl Flynn has to rescue. I don’t need a knight in white armor. I mean a white knight in shiny armor. Whatever. I don’t need him.
I need to be my own knight. To find my own strength. To build my own life.
This past month with Flynn has been amazing, but it was never meant to last.
I asked him to be the guy to help me find my way back into life and living. Back into my body. Back into sex. He did all of that for me. But to ask him any more isn’t fair. Especially when he has other people relying on him.
He already has to take care of his mom. And now Cadence and her baby. There is no way I will suck his attention from that. It wouldn’t be fair. He deserves someone who can give to him. Not just take. And I am a total drain on his energy.
I give myself thirty minutes to cry, and then I wipe my tears and get off the bed.
I sit at my sewing table and pick up one of the hand-dyed skirts I’m making. It’s time to finish the costumes for Black Velvet Burlesque.
Flynn showed me how to live.
I’m going to keep on living.
Flynn
In the most fucked up scene ever, Lake and I sit in Cadence’s living room with her to try to figure shit out. They’re both hitting the weed to get through this.
I’m stone sober.
I know better than to turn to a substance when I’m in this dark of a place. I’ve been around drugs and alcohol my whole life. I know how bad it can turn when you don’t have your shit together. And I am about as far from having my shit together as I could possibly get.
I’ve been mostly catatonic on my couch for the past six days trying not to think about how much I miss Nadia. I played the shows we had booked, but it was just going through the motions and as soon as we finished our sets, I bailed.
I actually spent a lot of the time this week not thinking at all. Just blank as fuck.
The lights are on, but no one’s home, as they say.
Now I sit with elbows on my knees, my head low, trying to parse all the wild energy in the room.