My eyes fell to the floor. “Bye Heath.”

“I’m going to prove to you Harlow that I’m sorry. I’m going to show you how much I love you.”

I looked up. “You’ve shown me that already. When you had sex with someone else.”

My words hurt him but he didn’t defend himself. He just nodded. And then he was gone.

I closed the door behind me and slid to the floor. I couldn’t hold back the tide of emotion any longer. The dam wall broke and I finally began to cry.

At lunchtime a bouquet of flowers arrived with a note that simply read: You are everything to me.

As I lay catatonic and heartbroken on my bed I looked at the card and truly wished I could believe him.

* * * * *

And so it went on over the next few days. The text messages. The phone calls. The flowers.

“You should talk to him,” Bridget said after a ridiculously huge bouquet of roses and gerberas turned up at work.

It was my first shift back since the breakup. When the flowers arrived, I stopped the flower delivery girl from leaving, asked her to drop them at the hospital across town and slipped her a twenty for her efforts.

“Brutal,” Leo said with raised eyebrows.

Silently, I shot him a warning look as I tied my apron around my waist.

Thankfully it was a busy night. Fat Tony had a band playing, a young group popular with the college crowd. By 9:30 the place was crowded and I was rushed off my feet taking orders and dishing out beers.

I was standing at the bar waiting for Leo to pour a couple of beers when he turned up. I looked up to see him standing in front of me. He looked terrible.

“What are you doing here?”

“You won’t answer my texts or phone calls. I had to see you.”

“I’m working.”

“Can you take a break?”

“No. Look around, Heath. This place is packed.”

“Please, I need to talk to you, Harlow.”

“It’s okay Harlow, you go take a break.” Fat Tony appeared next to me. His eyes were gentle and wise as he nodded his head towards the door. “We got it covered for a while.”

When I hesitated he gestured again towards the door. Reluctantly, I removed my apron and followed Heath out to the parking lot.

We stood in the half-light.

“What do you want Heath?”

“I’m sorry Harlow. I had to see you. Baby I’m so sorry—”

“Don’t call me that,” I said interrupting him and folding my arms around my waist.

He nodded. He looked exhausted. Like he had no more fight left in him.

“I can’t tell you how sorry I am. I fucked up. I really fucked up. And I know there is no excuse.” He looked pale and void of all the frenetic energy that was typical of him. “But I can’t keep going like this. I can’t lose you. I’m not coping without you –“

“That’s crazy Heath. If I was so fucking important, why did you fuck someone else?”

In the past couple of days my heartache had turned to a cold and ferocious anger. And this angry, hurt version of me wasn’t about to beat around the bush.

Heath shook his head and his eyes closed and opened, as if my words physically hurt him.

But his voice was calm.

“Since you came into my life, you have been the only thing I have been able to think about. I never thought I would fall in love like I did with you. I fell hard, Harlow. I fell so damn hard for you. You became everything to me, my every reason for breathing, every reason for living. But then when I saw you with Colton –”

He drew in a deep breath. “I’ve never known jealousy until I met him. I hated that you had loved him. Hated that he knew you before I did. Hated that you had so much history together. It was all new to me. I didn’t know how to cope with those feelings. And then, when I saw you together,  I always knew you were too good for me and then when he kissed you and I thought you were kissing him back …” He groaned and looked desperate. “I’d never felt what I felt in that moment and it drove me insane.”

“Insane is fucking right.” I bit the inside of my mouth and tightened my arms around my waist.

“Please Harlow … this is killing me,” he begged softly. “I saw you with Colton and I didn’t know how to cope. I thought you didn’t want me anymore—”

“I told you that you could trust me. That you had nothing to worry about with Colton,” I snapped. “Yet when you see me with him you automatically think the worst. You’re always telling me to trust you. Yet the minute I need you to trust me, you go off and fuck some random girl in an airplane toilet cubicle.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” His eyes were suddenly bright with emotion. “Don’t you think I hate myself for not trusting you? Don’t you think I hate myself for all of this? For hurting you. For destroying us. God Harlow, don’t you think I know how much I let down the most important person in the world to me—” His voice broke and he exhaled deeply as he looked to the sky.

I couldn’t look at him. Because all I could see was him and that awful woman. My face felt stiff with hurt, my throat cold and tight.

“You need to leave me alone Heath. I need time to get over this.” I shook my head at my words. “If that’s even possible.”

“Will you ever be able to forgive me?”

I honestly didn’t know. At that moment it didn’t seem possible. All I could see was him and her. And my imagination was a mean bitch. It tormented me with images of him and her, together. Images of her awful red mouth all over him. Kissing him. Touching him. Fucking him … her tentacles sliming all over him.

“Probably not,” I whispered looking at the ground.

“Please don’t say that.”

“You’ve hurt me Heath. You. My best friend in the whole world. I never thought you’d –” I stopped, because my thoughts and words hurt me. “I need time to process this. To work out why. To work out why you gave up on us.”

“How could you say that?” he cried. “How could you say I gave up on us? I fucked up, Harlow. But you walking away … that’s you giving up on us!” He ran a hand over his face. “When you left me you took everything. I’m so lost without you I can hardly breathe. I can’t think straight. All I can think of is how I made the most incredible woman in the world stop loving me.”

Without warning he pulled me into his arms and I was no match for his strength. His strong arms encircled me, pinning my arms to my side. There was no point in struggling. But my body remained stiff and unresponsive. My eyes squeezed shut.

“Please baby,” he begged, holding me tightly against his thumping chest. “Please take me back.”

Warm tears played in the corner of my eyes. Being in his arms had once been my sanctuary. Now it only broke my heart. Why? Because I didn’t belong there anymore.

“Tell me you still love me …” His voice broke.

I pushed him away. Caught unaware his muscular arms released me and I stepped back from him, glaring at him through unshed tears. He looked like shit. No. He looked worse than that. He looked broken.

“You did this to us,” I said barely controlling my quivering voice. “You broke us Heath.”

“I know,” he replied like the wind had been knocked out of him. “But if you take me back Harlow I will spend the rest of our lives making it up to you.”

“No.”

His face crumpled. “Don’t do this.”

I couldn’t take any more of this. I clinched my fists. Only a week ago I had contemplated moving my life from Georgia to California just to be with him. I had been prepared to face the wrath of my mother and the immense disappointment of my daddy. I must have been fucking insane.

“Do what Heath? Do what?” I yelled. “You already did this to us!”

I didn’t wait for his response. I turned and blindly ran back into the bar, not stopping until I reached the privacy of the staff bathroom where I slid down the wall and began to sob.

Chapter Seventeen HEATH