Echoes of the Heart, Casey, L.A. [reader novel .txt] 📗

turned emotionless and when I looked up into his eyes, it was like I could see him building up a wall protect himself from further hurt . . . to protect him from me.

“I wish things were different.”

He licked his lips. “So that’s it?”

I couldn’t move.

“I . . . I guess it is. You have to go.”

“Everyone in my life has sent me away. My mum sent me away when she picked drugs over me, all those families I went on visits to sent me away when they didn’t want to adopt me, Owen and Freda drove me away when I was no longer in the system and couldn’t earn them money . . . I never ever thought you would send me away, too.”

My heart shattered as Risk took one step back from me and then another, I sobbed a little more with each one.

“Risk, please.”

His jaw clenched. “What?”

“Please,” I whimpered. “Just . . . just . . . kiss me before you go.”

I thought I would have to beg him, but I didn’t.

The words were barely out of my mouth when he surged forward and wrapped me in his embrace. We were soaked to the bone, but it didn’t seem to matter when he lowered his head and his lips met mine in a furious passion. I lifted my hands to his soaking hoodie and pulled him as hard against me as I could. Our kiss was filled with broken promises, unimaginable hurt, heartfelt love and the brutal reality that this was likely the last one we would ever share.

I didn’t want the kiss to end, but, like all good things, it did.

“I’ll keep your mum in my prayers,” Risk said against my lips before he took a step back and lifted his hand to wipe away the rainwater on his face. “I’ll come by tomorrow when you’re at work and I’ll get all of my stuff. The rent money for this month is in an envelope under the mattress on my side of the bed. Make sure you always have your inhaler . . . your prescription needs to be refilled next week. Don’t forget.”

I choked out the word, “Okay.”

Risk bowed his head. “Take care of yourself, Cherry.”

“Keep chasin’, rock star.”

I had always told him that. No matter what life threw at him, I always told him to keep chasing his dreams.

Without a word, Risk turned and walked away from me, I had to force my legs not to run after him. I lifted my hand that still clenched my inhaler and inhaled a couple of puffs of my medicine. I wasn’t sure if I was about to have an attack or not. I felt horrendous pain in my chest, but I didn’t know if it was because I was struggling to breathe or because I had just forced the love of my life to walk away from me. All I knew was I was hurting, and watching Risk disappear from view was like someone stabbed a blade into my chest and twisted it.

Somehow, I turned around and began walking. I was replaying my conversation with Risk over and over in my mind and I couldn’t see a way that it could end where he didn’t have to give up everything he had ever dreamed of to stay with me in Southwold. I knew in my heart that that was the direction things would have headed for us. Risk loved me most in the entire world and there was nothing on God’s green earth that he wouldn’t give up to be with me. That included his dream of being a successful musician. I wasn’t going to be the person who killed his dream.

I refused.

I ended up at my front door without realising I had been walking home. When I got inside and closed the door behind me, the silence in my home was deafening. I began to strip out of my clothes where I stood. The sound of the sopping wet fabric smacking against the floor was barely audible because a new sound filled the silence. My crying. I couldn’t believe what had just taken place. I had broken up with Risk . . . with my Risk. Nothing in my life was the same as it had been a week ago.

Everything was different now.

My home, my town, my mum, my life, me.

All of it had been flipped on its head. I had to actively live without the relationship that my new adult life had been built around. It hurt. God, it hurt. I felt like I couldn’t breathe past the pain, yet I continued to breathe. I was somehow surviving even though on the inside I crumbled to nothingness. When I woke up that morning, I had no idea that my world could be turned inside out again. Just like the snap of my fingers, the life I planned to have was snatched away from me and the worse thing about it all . . . everything that led to right now was my decision.

Naked and shivering, I turned on the lights inside my home then I walked into my bedroom. I sat at my vanity table and stared into the mirror, wondering how I could look exactly the same, but feel so changed inside. The life I had planned with Risk was nothing more than a pipe dream now. The path we had walked together for so long had now become divided and I was quickly finding out that the road I was on was a one-way street. I couldn’t make a U-turn and go back to the start because that time had come and gone.

Risk was following his journey to stardom and it was a path I knew in my heart that he would succeed in reaching the end of. Risk, and his talent, were too big for our small town and much too big for me. Letting him go was my gift to him and though he didn’t understand that now I knew someday that he would. I was freeing him from a life that bound and constricted someone