The Replacement Boyfriend

Chapter 11

Tace

"Red," Zayne wheezed as my hand hovered over the handle of my front door. "Just listen, okay?"

Listen to what? I wanted to ask. Excuses? More lies? If what he was telling me was true – if Dane had joined the military then that meant they both had been lying to me for months. Well, Dane had been lying and Zayne had been withholding information. Either way, I felt betrayed and wronged and I could stop the tears from falling.

It had been three weeks since we had come to Chicago and it had been three weeks of me changing into someone who could control her anxiety and not cry about small things. But hearing this – finding out about this, it made me feel like Dane had broken my heart all over again. Only it felt worse than when he had broken up with me. Because back then, I knew I'd still see him when I go home and I knew if I did contact him from college, he would respond because Dane wasn't the kind who could ignore me. And now, I felt like I didn't really know Dane at all. He had been lying to me for months and I hadn't even seen it. I felt like a naïve little girl who only believed in her fantasy world and prince in shining armor when the prince had been lying to her all along.

"Red," I heard as he closed the space between us and turned around before he could touch me to make me face him.

"What do you want me to listen to, Zayne?" I asked him, my voice trembling. "I think I've heard it all."

"He didn't want to hurt you," he told me, trying to catch his breath. "He didn't want to hold you back."

"Hiding such a thing because he asked you to is one thing," I told him slowly, my voice cracking mid-sentence. "But justifying why the two of you lied to me for months is a completely different thing. I did find it weird that you came to comfort me that night instead of comforting your brother. Now I know why."

"Tace-" I thought a heard someone else voice call from down the hall and even Zayne turned around to look but no one was there.

"Red, I'm not trying to justify it," Zayne took a step forward but I backed up against the door. "It was wrong to keep this from you but he didn't want you to hold on when you can be happy-"

"Happy?" I spat out. "What's there to be happy about? He lied to me. You lied to me. I feel like an idiot and if he should have explained this to me himself."

"I know, I know," he tried to reason with me. "That was a dick move, okay? But I'm here for you and I'm going always going to be here, no matter what. I'm not going anywhere."

"I'm mad at you, too!" I almost yelled. "How could you keep this from me?! You both were supposed to be my best friends-"

"I am!" he exclaimed. "That's why I'm here, Red. Why won't you let me in? Why did you always push me away?"

"Because you never saw what was going on in my head," I choked on my words but now that I thought about it, neither had Dane.

"You never let me in the way you let Dane," I would say the look in his eyes almost broke my heart but my heart was never whole to begin with.

"He pushed his way through, Zayne," I pointed out. "You had your own life and you didn't see me suffering the way he did."

"I was there," he said through gritted teeth.

"Not when I hurt myself," I said, my voice almost a whisper. I hadn't expected him to hear me but when his eyes flickered to mine, I knew that he had.

"When?" he demanded. "When your step father beat you?"

My lips formed a thin line and I nodded. He didn't know that my step father hadn't only beaten me. He had done much worse and no one knew about it. No one could know. That year, I had cut myself – not in visible places – but I hadn't told anyone about it. Dane had found out but had sworn not to tell a soul.