LOVE? NEVER | ✓

Chapter Sixteen

"Be sure to taste your words before you spit them out."

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"Ethen, I'm sorry," she started, her eyes aimlessly searching for mine.

I nodded, biting in my lower lip and turning my head to face the window on the side.

"I'm really sorry," she started again."This shouldn't have happened."

I nodded, "Good thing you know."

"Why didn't you let me explain?"

"Because what you did changed everything."

"Why did you leave?"

"Why do you care?" I asked, her eyes widened a fraction but then she was back to her calm, resting demeanor.

"I care, of course I do."

"And why is that?"

"Because you'll be my husband."

"Oh," I said sarcastically. "I see you remember who I am to you now."

"I never forgot," she breathed. "Ethen, it was a mistake and I was in the spur of the moment—"

"So you accept the fact that he was inches away from kissing you?!" I snapped.

"Ethen, calm down—"

"You don't tell me to calm down, woman!" I yelled back. "What you did is called betrayal. It's called betrayal, Rose, and betrayal is something that stings, it stabs in your back!"

"Ethen, please."

I rubbed my face in my palms then looked over to her again, she was running her fingers through her hair over and over.

"It was so hard on me," she started, facing her shoes. "I had so much going on and beer was the only solution."

"The only solution to what?"I asked, irritation filling my voice.

"To my problems."

Silence. 

She hid her face behind her hands and her shoulders started shaking slowly. With one hand, she held the chair and fixed herself...rubbing her red shot eyes roughly.

Tension was building slowly in the atmosphere, it was almost as if oxygen was sucked outside the room...leaving us breathing empty air, carefully making us numb to the core.

"Did drinking beer end them?"

"W-What?" she asked, her hands dropped to her lap.

"Did what you do fix anything you had in your life?" I asked her, a small, tiny part of me wanted to soothe her, but the other, more prodigious part wanted me to stay...frozen.

She shook her head.

"Expected," I muttered loud enough for her to hear.

"Ethen, I swear I didn't for all that to happen," a tear escaped her puffy eyes. "I didn't want him to do that, but the feeling the beer gave me was...different."

I breathed, "Was being numb and senseless something you enjoyed? Don't you realize how deep your blunder was? Can't you at least care for your health, Rose?!"

"I just had so much going on and being able to forget everything was..." she trailed off.

"Was what?!" I yelled."Nice?!"

She nodded.

My breathing raged, my hands curled into fists on my sides and every muscle in my body tensed.