𝐕𝐈𝐓𝐑𝐈𝐎𝐋𝐈𝐂 ❶

𝟓𝟗. ✭ 𝐁𝐑𝐎𝐎𝐊𝐒 ✭

I close the door behind me after basically being dismissed by Torey's emotionless state. Those bright-blues had held nothing, maybe a touch of surprise but nothing other than that. I don't know what I was expecting; maybe him pushing me off in anger or registering some other type of emotion other than nothing. Anything would've been better than nothing.

My feet move slowly on their own accord toward our room. It won't be ours for much longer as Dani and Torey will be leaving tomorrow. The three of us will probably never share a room together again, never do what we did last night. I guess that was one way to end a relationship— fucking your girlfriend and her future life partner before they leave you.

Speaking of people leaving me, that's a trauma point that I hadn't even realized was still a point. I thought I'd gotten over people leaving me, being alone. I spent the last few years of my life alone before Dani. When did you let myself become so vulnerable again? Not just for one person either, for both of them, and the answer is— I don't fucking know. I wish I could just turn those feelings off which is what I'd tried to do earlier by drowning myself in whiskey.

When I get to our door I pause in front of it needing a moment to process what'd just transpired with Torey. He was pushing everyone away to make it easier on himself, to convince himself that everyone was better off without him. He and I were on the opposite spectrum of the same issue; I have abandonment issues and he has abandoning issues. My thought process revolves around not wanting to be left behind, to be all alone. Torey's is leaving people behind because he thinks they're better off without him and, because during his time with the Albanian mafia, it'd once been a necessity for him to do that.

I thought if I showed my vulnerability first he would take down at least one wall. I had been open and honest with him about my feelings, why I feel the way that I do about him. My hope with that was maybe he would be more accepting and it had seemed he had been over the past few days. It was like he was starting to maybe feel something different for me. Maybe it was all just in my head. Too many maybes and not enough certainties.

This is how we're going to leave things and I hate it. I've had a lifetime's worth of no closure. I guess this is just going to be another one of those things. When they leave I'll just throw myself into helping Torey's parents and then after everything is said and done with I'll probably jump back into my previous line of work. I thought I had laid all those demons to rest but now they're festering inside of me all over again.

The sound of a door opening and then loudly slamming have me snapping my head to the side. I see Luke exiting the room that I just had looking extremely angry. One guess as to who had caused him to be like that. He stops just outside of his door and pinches the bridge of his nose before looking up at the ceiling. After a moment he shoves both hands in his pockets and looks at the carpeted floor with a shake of the head.

"You alright?" I can't help but ask. Torey's family has been nothing but nice to me. They've made me feel accepted, unlike Torey himself. They made me feel like what I'm currently going through isn't weird or abnormal and I am grateful for it, appreciative of their acceptance.

Luke looks over to me, face full of disappointment and sadness now rather than the furious mask he'd been wearing. "Not really, no." He walks over to me, hands still in his pockets. "And you, are you alright? I saw what happened between the two of you before you left." Great. I'd had an audience.

"No, I'm not really alright either. But Torey is acting this way on purpose." He raises a curious brow at that. "Your son has a habit of turning what could be a potentially painful emotional situation for him into a joke or by being just plain rude. He hurts people so that they don't get too close. It's a defense mechanism so that he doesn't have to feel things, easier to leave people when they're angry with you, when they don't want you around."