Lies That Bind (on hold temporarily)

Chapter Six

T Y L E R

"Only one problem."

"What's that?" she asks, tilting her head back to meet my eyes.

"I already checked out of my hotel room, and seeing as how I'm not technically here on business anymore, I can't charge it to the company, and if I put it on my personal card-"

"She'll see it..." she sighs, the weight of reality crashing down on both of us.

"Yeah," I breathe, tracing circles on her back with the tip of my finger.

"You know you can always stay here, Ty. Even when whatever the fuck this is ends," she says as she brings her hand to my cheek.

I clench my jaw as I stare into her eyes.

When this ends? Hell fucking no.

"I don't think I could ever give you up, Sara." I whisper.

As soon as the words leave my mouth her eyes fill with sadness and she quickly rests her head on my chest to avoid meeting my eyes.

If I truly meant that I could never give her up, then why the fuck did I all those years ago?

To this day I still don't know why I did.

We were sixteen. We had our whole lives ahead of us, but I knew that I wanted a future with Sara.

Marriage. Kids. Grandkids. All of it. I wanted everything with her. I still do.

For a sixteen year old kid who shouldn't have known the first thing about what it meant to love someone, I knew that I loved her. And despite witnessing her parents' marriage fail in an exceptionally brutal way right before her eyes, she loved me too.

So why did her wanting to have sex change everything for us? And why did me saying no push her to him.

It's not like I didn't want to, I was sixteen for fuck's sake, my dick was constantly tucked under the waistband of my boxers to hide how painfully hard I was.

All I thought about was sex. Sex with her. I'd even get off to porn of girls who looked like her when the pictures she sent weren't enough.

I only said no because I was scared that the future I wanted with her would start sooner rather than later. But clearly Alec, my former best friend who was more like a brother, wasn't worried about that.

I never thought that telling her I wasn't ready for what could come from us having sex would lead to her cheating on me, let alone with him.

I never expected to witness it either. I just stood there in shock watching through the crack of my bedroom door as she got her nickname of rosy.

Why him? Why in my room?

Why that night? That fucking night when I went to the dollar store around the block from my house after practice and spent an hour trying to get a stupid fucking plastic ring from the toy machine.

Would getting there five minutes sooner have changed our future? Would we still be together?

"Why'd you do it?" The words come out of my mouth before I can stop them.

"Do what?" she asks, her voice low.

I pause for a moment, wondering if opening this can of worms is worth it. But let's face it, no matter what her reasoning, it's not going to change anything.

"Do what?" she repeats, rolling onto her side to look at me, furrowing her brows in concern.

"Cheat on me with Alec," I breathe.