SWNOVELS My Ex-Boyfriend’s Brothers: Chapter 46
I forced myself to my feet after a solid two hours of crying. I felt like I’d been shoved through a cheese grater but I needed to find the guys and explain to them what happened. I had to leave and I needed to explain why. Walking to the cabins was painful and when I found Luke’s cabin empty, I nearly gave up. Ryan’s cabin was next and it was empty, too. Knowing they were all in Jackson’s cabin, I pushed open the door and felt my stomach drop when I didn’t find them.
His stuff was gone. Running back to Ryan’s, I found his stuff missing, too. I was gasping for breath and crying hysterically when I got to Luke’s and realized the only stuff left behind was mine. They were gone. I couldn’t make sense of that, though, so I rushed back to my old room in the lodge, doing my best to convince myself that they were there, waiting on me. Only, they weren’t.
I pulled out my phone with shaking hands and tried to call each of them, only to be sent to voicemail. Had something happened? How had they all vanished so quickly? It didn’t make any sense to me. In the state I was in, I couldn’t figure out why they weren’t there when I needed them.
I aimlessly trudged back towards Luke’s cabin to gather my things and found myself face to face with Brad just outside of the lodge. Smoking a cigarette, he smiled when he saw me and blew smoke in my face.
“You look great.” He laughed. “If you’re trying to find your boyfriends, they’re gone.”
“Where’d they go?”
“They heard what a skank you are and left. I don’t think it took them a full fifteen minutes to get out of here.”
Ice water ran through my veins. “You told them I tried to kiss you.”
He smirked. “No. Christina did. She thought they deserved to know. And then I filled in the blanks for them, of course. Did you know we’ve been sleeping together for months and that you’ve been trying to make my wedding fall apart this whole time?”
I squeezed my eyes shut. His lies sounded outlandish to me and I couldn’t believe anyone would ever believe him, but it was clear they had. They’d believed the worst of me and left me behind.
“You thought that you were going to get your claws in the Heath family one way or another, huh? Jokes on you, Maggie. They left you even faster than I did.” Brad inched closer to me. “And just like that, you’re out of my life again, Maggie.”
I walked away from him without another word. Nothing mattered. He could win all he wanted. I just wanted to get my things and leave as soon as I could. If my business survived the fall out from Brad’s lies, I’d be surprised. Mom was safe. At least there was that. I was lonelier than when I’d arrived and my heart was crumbling with each second that passed in my new reality, but Mom was safe. She was the whole reason I’d taken the job anyway. Maybe once I could breathe normally again, I’d appreciate what I’d walked away with a little more.
I felt like I was moving through quicksand as I gathered my things from Luke’s cabin and went back to my small room. I could hear the beginning of the morning coming and I hated it. I crawled into bed and pulled the blankets over my head, not wanting to hear the birds singing or anything else. After sharing a bed with three giant men who ran hot, my bed felt like ice. I couldn’t get warm and I couldn’t sleep from how hard I was shaking.
I cried until I thought I was cried out and then I cried even more. I couldn’t stop thinking about Luke, Ryan, and Jackson leaving me. They’d believed the worst about me and left. I didn’t understand how they could just leave without trying to talk to me. Luke’s whole speech about knowing I was loyal had all been bullshit. They didn’t trust me. They didn’t respect me enough to talk to me. They didn’t care about me at all if they were willing to leave like they had.
It took me so long to fall asleep that the sun had risen completely and filled my room with light. Hidden under my blankets, I slept restlessly, tossing and turning to nightmares. I woke up gasping for air so many times that eventually I stopped trying to go back to sleep. I just stayed there, under the blankets, blinking to feel the drag of my eyelashes against the heavy material.
As the room began to darken again, I forced myself to the bathroom to pee. I stared at my reflection in the mirror and grimaced at myself. My eyes were swollen and red, there were dark bags under them, and I looked like I could’ve been cast as an extra for a zombie film. The taste in my mouth was bad enough that I found the energy to brush my teeth. That was all I could do for myself, though. I went straight back to bed and hid away again.
I lost track of time once the sun went down again. My stomach began growling at some point but I ignored it. I ignored everything. I found that if I lay perfectly still and held my breath, it was almost like nothing was real. I hadn’t lost a friend. I hadn’t lost the men I loved.
Loved. That word was an airhorn being blown right into my ear. It was red and flashing to warn of danger coming. Sharp, brittle, and nasty, it cut me deep to understand my emotions after the fact. The men I loved were gone. Easy come, no such thing as easy go. They’d slipped into my heart so quickly but I knew to the very core of my being that they wouldn’t just slip right back out.
I was screwed.