Take It Back - Bucky Barnes x OC

Chapter Eighteen

[ After all, what if he only loved you so much and not enough?]

It had been years ago, but it couldn't be broken.

With slight hesitation and a convincing stature, Riley had looked at herself dead in the eye.

Her hands wrapped around the edge of the dingy cold sink, gripping it tightly in order to control her anger. Her eyes were bloodshot and her knuckles white, matching the walls of the old bathroom. The drain was dark and hollow, its inner piece missing since around the time she was ten years old. Around the drain were splatters of orange and ugly brown, it spread outwards towards the inner ends of the sink, the rust making itself a part of the porcelain.

In her reflection, her tired eyes had drifted down to her lips then slowly down the middle of her chest where a gold chain hung loosely, a little round pearl hanging off the end of it. Her trembling right hand had gone to the pearl, and making her neck as stiff as possible and with a grunt, she had pulled the small chain off her body. She felt the soft burning on the back on her neck where the necklace had dented into her skin, but she didn't care.

It hadn't hurt as much as her heart did.

Opening her hand, slowly her fingers unraveled from around the jewelry.

She felt sad and immense sorrow as she looked at it - the necklace laid broken in her hand, its frayed ends falling off the sides of her palm.

She made a cup with her hand and tilted it in the same angle as the sink. She watched in awe as it slid down the gaping hole of the drain, gone forever.

That was when she had made a promise to that she would never love someone ever again.

~

It had killed Riley when she discovered it. She didn't expect her guard to have fallen, and she hadn't expected it to be with him of all people.

Her chest grew heavy with dread months ago when the realization that she'd broken that promise had hit her. It had happened again.

She thought she had been convincing enough to not fall for another man, at least not in such an irresponsible way.

To her dismay, of course she hadn't convinced herself and she had allowed herself to fall in love again, and this time it was stronger than it had ever been in her entire life.

She was not prepared for any of this. None of this was even supposed to happen. It wasn't like it was with Eddie or Brock where she had purposely looked for them and with the purpose of a non-platonic relationship.

Bucky had been different.

Bucky was her best friend. He was her sister's fiancé.

It was a mistake.

She felt like an awful person for putting him in this situation. Coming between a man and a woman's love? That was not Riley.

And that is why she left. Why she had to leave.

She didn't dare look back as she picked her bag off his marble counter and her little cardigan that had been draped over his bar stool moments before he had given her that glass of whiskey.

Her eyes lingered there for a second.

The glass was still there, sitting in the dark where the sun had not yet reached, and the ice had melted and now pooled at the bottom of the cup - warm and bland.

She hadn't finished it - her drink. He had been too busy kissing her, seducing her, making love to her.

She stumbles blindly for his door as her eyes remain on the tips of her shoes. She had to keep her head on straight. This had gotten farther than she ever wanted it to.