“Don’t,” she hissed, holding her free hand in the air. Her gaze didn’t meet mine, and I felt the emptiness beginning to overwhelm me already.

“Ren, you can’t leave,” I pleaded.

“Then tell me what’s been going on.”

My chest tightened, and my throat felt thick. I couldn’t tell her the thing I feared the most, not after all that we’d seen. I couldn’t make this moment worse than it already was because she’d want to stay and then… What would happen then?

Her gaze finally met mine and it was laced with bitter disappointment. Slowly, her head moved from side to side, and she grimaced, a single tear sliding down her cheek. I ached to touch her, to make her stay, but if my father was right…

She swallowed hard and turned, practically running from the room. I followed her like a fool, but all I saw was her back as she left, and when the door slammed closed behind her, everything seemed to stop. Silence enveloped the apartment and my entire world in a way I never thought possible. It was always so full of her—my Ren—and now there was nothing.

My fingers began to ache, and I curled them into tight fists. I was meant to be strong for her, a pillar that she could lean on, not the other way around. I was a ticking time bomb.

Glancing out the corner of my eye, I saw the fuzzy outline of the photographs that I’d hung on the wall for her. The one of her and her dad, the one of her and her mum and the one of us together at the gym’s opening party.

I couldn’t bring myself to let her in, and this time, to save herself from the same bullshit I’d put her through before, she’d left me. She was gone.

Turning, I stared at the photo of her and me standing chest to chest at Pulse’s opening party. The giddy happiness I’d felt that night now replaced with nothing but shame. I was such a stupid fucking asshole. I kept breaking everything while trying to spare other people’s emotions. I was trying to save her from this, but I hadn’t counted on it being so painful. I’d been beaten up, punched in the head, broken bones, lost teeth, been knocked out cold, but none of that compared to this.

This was far worse.

With a cry, I grabbed the photo from the wall, tearing the hook from the plaster, and hurled the entire thing across the room. It smashed into the opposite wall, the glass shattering with a crack, and it fell to the floor with a bang that echoed into the void she’d left behind.

When it all came down to it, she was the only person in the entire world who had the power to break me completely. I might come back from an episode, but I’d never come back from her.

Glancing down at the side table, I opened the drawer, my hands shaking even more than they had been. The ring was still there, staring at me like I was the biggest moron in the world, and I began to ache at the realization that everything that had happened in the last day was one hundred percent real.

Holding the little black box in my hands, I cracked open the lid. Staring at the ring and all the tiny little diamonds that dusted across the band, I couldn’t feel anything but rage.

She’d left me, and the monster had surfaced…just like he’d said it would.

Maybe, just maybe…I had saved her after all.

Thirteen

Ren

Staring up at the celling, I sighed deeply like it would expel the ache in my soul.

The absence of Ash Fuller was something I’d thought I’d never have to live through again. Feeling it the first time around had almost broken me beyond repair, and I was determined not to let it happen again.

Lying in my bed in the ex-storage room upstairs at Beat, didn’t quite have the same effect as it usually did. It had been home for a long time, a safe place to come to if I needed it, but all I could see was him.

We’d fallen in love right here. He’d kissed me for the first time in this bed, he’d held me, talked to me, and trusted me. We’d also fought like hell with one another, two stubborn alphas, with total messes for lives, trying to push each other away and fit together all at the same time.

When it was all said and done, love and trust wasn’t enough to keep us together. Was it ever going to be? I felt like I’d been living in a dream, a really sweet fucking dream, and now it was time to wake up.

Reality was bleak. Even bleaker than the days right after my mum passed. I’d filled the void she’d left behind with one-night stands and drinking, but I’d realized pretty quickly that it wasn’t going to fix anything, so I’d stopped that spiral before it got out of hand. That was the moment I’d pulled my finger out, fired up the computer and began my search for Dad.

The first time Ash left me, I filled the hole his absence left with fighting. The AUFC had been calling, and my Dad wanted to take me pro, so I’d gone along with it. Fighting to forget—replacing one type of pain with another. Ultimately, the big time wasn’t what I wanted and I’d gone back to fight at The Underground alongside Ash. That reconciliation had been difficult, but we’d gotten through it. Life was meant to be peachy after that, you know, the happily ever after and all. It was meant to be forever…or so I thought.

Ash had been the glue that had stuck my broken, jagged pieces together. Now that he was gone, everything was back to square one. What was I meant to do now? My entire life was in that gym in Abbotsford, and now I had nothing. He was the piece that completed my puzzle, but maybe I wasn’t his after all. If I was, then he’d be able to share with me whatever was eating him up.

Had I really known the real Ash Fuller? I’d asked myself that question so many times that it’d lost all meaning.

I closed my eyes, and the words he spoke to me right before I tasted his mouth for the first time filled my mind. Can I kiss you?

The door flew open, the light flicked on, and I sat up in bed with a gasp.

“Oh shit.”

Caleb looked as surprised at the fact that I was in bed as I was to see him. He hovered in the doorway, one hand on the light switch like he was stuck as to which way to flee.

“I didn’t know you were here,” he said sheepishly.

It didn’t escape me that his gaze dropped briefly to my breasts before he looked away.

“I didn’t plan on being here,” I replied, clutching the blanket against my chest.

“I was just…I need the top one.” He pointed to the pile of boxes in the corner of the room.

“I’ll bring it down for you in a sec,” I said, waving my hand to shoo him away. “Just let me get dressed.”

His eyes narrowed slightly at the notion of me getting changed, but I didn’t fuel the fire. He nodded once and backed out of the room, closing the door behind him. Shit, the last thing I needed was Caleb sniffing around if he knew that Ash and I were on the outs. He’d made himself perfectly clear that he was interested.

He was kinda cute in a boyish kind of way, but when I looked at him, I didn’t get the same zing that pinged through me when I looked at Ash. Shit, Ash.

The thought of him and I together opened up any cracks that had closed overnight with added heartache. Like pouring salt into the wound, an image of us downstairs on the mats appeared in my mind’s eye. Him over me, our reflection in the mirrors… Dropping my head into my hands, I rubbed my eyes, giving the vision a moment to disappear.

Then I got up, got dressed, and carried Caleb’s box downstairs.

The world didn’t wait for the broken hearted.

**

There was no way in hell I was going back to Pulse, and I didn’t expect Ash would be waiting for me to go to work, so I hung around Beat all day, hiding in the office.

Caleb didn’t ask, and I didn’t tell, and my phone didn’t ring once.

“It won’t ring the more you keep looking at it,” Caleb said as he sauntered into the office.