CHAPTER119
Jake has slowly unraveled me, and he has no clue. He has no idea the depths to which he has affected me, changed me. That damn Carrero and his effects on me can’t be reversed.
I keep people at arm’s length, even Sarah. She’s my best friend, yet I’ve never told her anything that would justify that title. I don’t blame her for drifting away, because I’ve never given her a reason not to. I know everything about her, yet she knows very little about me, only what she’s witnessed from being around me. I was always a closed book.
We drifted apart, and I was glad. She had been my focus, my person to protect and care for, in place of the mother I was leaving behind. She had given me a purpose, someone to take care of, and when she no longer needed me, I pulled away. I didn’t want her looking at me and remembering who I had been.
It suited me that I got a job that required me to devote all my time and attention to organizing someone else’s life. It’s what I needed: control, calm, organization, safety and security. Independence and self-reliance. I could focus on someone else’s existence and deny my own. Sarah never really knew the real me; she’d always seen the facade. Everyone has always seen the facade.
Everyone except Jake. He broke through the layers.
Men have always made me nervous, despite my moving away and starting over. Men have a way of making that wall go up. I don’t trust them; I never have. I don’t trust anyone except myself. Well, I didn’t.
Until Jake.
Do I trust Jake? I did, in my own way, but now?
Knowing what he’s gone to do, I don’t know anymore. I deserve it. He’s been patient, and he tries in a way no one has ever tried to see through my brave facade. He saw my facade right from the start; he said as much. I don’t want him to see through it because, if he did, and he found this Emma, what would he see?
Insecure, troubled, and emotionally all over the place. What would he do?
She’s a broken little girl who flinches when men raise their hands, even though she’s practiced remaining cool. She’s scared of getting close to anyone, even a friend, in case they rip her heart out like her own parents did. Her first start in life was learning that she could rely on no one, that no one loved her.
I can’t even relax and let anyone else look after me; I’m the only one I can rely on. But I let Jake, so many times; he’s taken care of me. It hurts to remember the countless ways he’s done so over the past months, but that Jake has just walked out on me, gone to hurt me in the cruelest way. Wiping the slate clean and ripping the floor from under me.
Letting people in just takes away your defenses, and they learn how to wound you deeply, like Jake has done now. People say they love you, but they don’t; it’s the ones who apparently love you that cut the deepest.
So why let anyone love me at all? Why care about him leaving me now? Stop caring, stop crying. Go back to numb, it was always better that way. Loving no one, letting no one in. Let him go, close him out and never trust him again.
* * *
I finally emerge, like an exhausted shell, hours before dawn. I watch the ocean lap up and down on the distant beach in the moonlight; the boat is still and quiet, and I feel so alone. I wonder where he is, and it slices across my heart cruelly; I wonder who ‘she’ is.
Don’t do this to yourself; this isn’t worth it.
I push it away and try not to dwell anymore. I create a new little black box in the recesses of my mind and push everything in there. I’ll label this one ‘Jake’ and file every single hurtful memory in there, every kiss, every touch, every tear.
Then, I won’t just close the lid, I’ll lock it tight and throw it into the deepest part of my crazy mind. That’s what I do when life throws me so much pain and misery, I move on. I stop myself from caring anymore, and that is exactly what I will do with him.
He wants to ‘uncross’ the line? Well I will erase the line and build a fucking steel wall to keep him on the other side. If he wants PA Emma back, then that’s what he will get."
