ARROGANT BRIT (A BRITISH BAD BOY ROMANCE) (18 page)

“And I with you,” I replied, “but surely
there’s something else you want out of life. I don’t really expect you to have
figured out what you’re doing with your future, but I’ve got a few years on
you.”

“That’s right, old man,” Clara teased.
“You’re getting up there. Gotta get your intentions for the days ahead set in
stone.”

“At twenty-six years old? Something like
that, yeah,” I nodded. “But you first. What are your plans?”

“Nothing in particular,” she shrugged.

“Nothing at
all
?”

“What can I say?” Clara answered. “I mean,
I’m only into my first year of college. Right now, I’m going for a biology
major, but who
knows
what I’ll be
wanting to do in a year, maybe two. As for now… all I’ve ever really wanted to
do was get away from here and start again, somewhere fresh.”

“You’re bored of it here,” I observed.

“Yeah. I mean, I’ve tagged along with Natalie
once or twice when she’s gone on a family vacation, but that’s not quite the
same… as much as I would hate to leave her, I’ve gotta figure things out for
myself.”

“I’m kind of surprised,” I chuckled. “You
leaving
Natalie?
I’ll believe it when
I see it.”

She shot me a dirty, teasing look.

“Where do you want to go?” I followed up.

“I don’t know.”

“Out of the country?”

“What? No, definitely not,” Clara shook her
head. “I’m fine with things just as they are here. When I say I want to ‘get
away from here’, I mean that I want to leave the state. Go to a different city.
Live a different way.”

“Nothing will teach you that like heading
abroad,” I hinted.

“Nah. Doesn’t really interest me,” she
insisted. “It’s dangerous abroad. Plus, there’s the whole matter of learning
other languages, etiquette, customs… I’d like to keep it simple for the time
being.

“Simple with
you
,” she hastily added.

I smiled. It was a nice thought, but I was
determined to help her see things my way, particularly when I knew what she was
about to ask…

“What about you?” she predictably continued
the train of thought, softly kissing my chest. “What do you want from the
future?”

A smile stretched across my face.

“Perfect world? I’d leave.”

She paused. “Leave? Like, go back to London?”

“Yeah,” I wistfully continued. “I’ve been
stationed in a few different spots around the world, but mostly Afghanistan.
Even in the more exotic locales… South Korea, Sweden, Germany… I could never
really enjoy the culture. Not without the military breathing down my neck.”

“You want to see the world,” Clara observed,
planting her lips on my neck.

“That’s right. But this time, I'd do it on
my
terms,” I elaborated, feeling my face
harden with the thought. “No automatic rifle at hand’s reach, no combat
fatigues. I step off a plane and backpack across Europe. I want to ride camels
outside Cairo, eat proper ramen in a hole-in-the-wall dive bar in Toyko, and
smoke myself silly in Amsterdam. There’s a great, big world out there, you
know… and I want to see it all.”

I reflected on this a moment.

It had been so important to me.

Joining the Marines had only convinced me
further that this was the right choice. I’d only gone from one fading
superpower to the next. I needed to get away from America, even England, and
see the rest of the world.

And I needed to do it independently of
military protocols and combat zones.

“How long do you want to be gone?” She asked
me, pulling my attention back downwards. “Can’t exactly knock all of that stuff
out in a few weeks, unless you’re taking the express route.”

“As long as I can, Clara. I’d take my sweet
time with it. Maybe I’d never come back.”

Something changed in her face.

Wait. Fuck.

Turmoil flashed in her eyes.

I reached down and drew her up my body. At my
silent behest, Clara laid her head into the nook in my chest. Tenderly, I stroked
her hair as I searched for the proper words.

“You asked what I wanted, Clara. And I told
you the truth. But being here, with you… I couldn’t just give this up, not even
for a second.”

“You need to do this,” she answered, almost
mournfully.

“Before, I was convinced… but now…”

“Now what?”

‘Now what’ indeed
, I thought for a moment.

 
“If there was any reason to stay,
anything that could pull me from that path… that reason would be you,” I
finally answered here.

The moment I saw that scared look in her
eyes, I knew that I’d seriously fucked up.

Clara’s face lifted to meet my gaze. She
looked terrified – a deer in the headlights, entranced but pulsating with
crushing, absolute fear.

 
“Let me make my own decisions,” I told
her gently, fighting down the concern that was swelling in my chest,
desperately hoping to calm her down. “You leave that stuff up to me.”

“No,” she told me, climbing up off of me.
“That’s not good enough. I can’t do that.”

I leapt up off of the bed. “Wait–”

“
No
,”
she insisted, throwing my hoodie back on. “You can’t just turn down that kind
of dream for me. I won’t let you. I’ll
never
let you. I can’t be the reason you throw all of that away.”

I laughed in complete exasperation. “We get
through an entire car ride
with our
parents, even with the most awkward
fucking
conversation ever, and it’s
me wanting to
travel the world
that makes you lose your shit?”

Clara turned on me with vicious eyes.

“Look,” I prefaced her, “you told me just
today –
hours ago
– that you’re
committed to this cause. Clara, you gave me
complete
conviction
that it was gonna be you and me against the world…”

“That was
before
I knew you had this dream,” she insisted. “You just heard
me tell you that I’m not interested in
that kind of a life. And now I find out that you
are?
And you
have been
for
years? I can’t stand in the way of that. I
won’t
be the kind of girl to ask you to stay. It’s not happening.”

“Clara,” I repeated, firmer this time. I
reached for her wrist, but she yanked it away, staring me down with hellfire in
her eyes.

“No, don’t… don’t you even
think
about touching me,” she growled.
“I
refuse
to let you do this. You
have to go, Dalton. Live that life.”

“Clara, I don’t
want
to go. I
want
to be
with you – to spend my days with…”

My words faltered as I watched her tremble
before me. As Clara lifted a face brazen with furious, tear-brimmed eyes, I
realized immediately what she really meant with those words.

“You have to go,” she repeated angrily.

“Clara…”

“
Now.
”

We stood there, watching each other for a
moment. I didn’t dare take a step towards her, not while seeing her like this.
My heart pounded in my chest, tearing apart with a wound more vicious than any
that I could have received in combat.

Because those wounds – the ones you survive,
at any rate – are just flesh deep. You lose an arm or a leg, maybe more. You
take stray shrapnel to the chest, and with luck you survive it. It kills a part
of you, it makes you weaker, but you learn to live on around it.

This was something much deeper.

This was the shrapnel that shredded your very
living soul… because you can’t
remove
ghost shrapnel, even if it’s still cutting you inside, penetrating down to your
core.

“
Go
,”
Clara repeated through gritted teeth, her tears rolling freely down her cheeks
now.

I’m not an English major, or a literary
critic. My weapon was never vocabulary; it was always a knife in a holster and
a rifle, slung over my back.

I say this to explain a point: I’m not
equipped with the right words for this. I can’t properly express to you how my
heartstrings strained
in that moment.
Every atom, every ounce of my very being was
desperate
to cross the distance to her, to wipe the tears from her
face and sweep her back into my warm, comforting embrace.

The look in her eyes said
Don’t you dare.

It said
Stay
back, I’m warning you
.

No weapon could ever win this standoff.

Without a single syllable uttered, I silently
gathered up my things and I left her.

Chapter 17

No matter how many sleepless nights passed
since that devastating afternoon, I couldn’t know for sure if I’d done the
right thing… or made the biggest mistake of my life.

It had been over a week since Dalton left my
apartment. Every night when my cheek struck the pillow, I wished that he were
there with me.

Whatever the ex-marine had seen in my eyes
that day, it had convinced him of what I knew was certain in that moment.
Mission accomplished. The man had gone completely radio silent.

Dalton’s words had rattled me down to my
inner being. Beyond all hope and reason, I didn’t dare let him choose to stay
here because of me. I’d heard how much he loved that dream; I couldn’t let
myself be the obstacle to his happiness.

But did I do the right thing?

My unfettered decision had grown uncertain.

Selfishly, of course I still wanted him. I
logically expected to need some time to get over him, but I hadn’t prepared
myself for how my heart had fractured. When the days continued and I still had
to force myself to eat, or exert willpower into every smile, I realized the
true depths to the pit of my despair.

My heart broke just a little more every day.

Perfect timing meant that I wasn’t scheduled
a single hour for the entire week after Dalton left. Banquet season had
apparently slid down to a grinding halt. That meant less morning shifts to go
around, and I didn’t have the energy to fight for the scraps.

Natalie was a godsend. She’s probably the
reason I climbed out of bed, made it to my classes, and turned in (most of) my
homework.

Dalton apparently did not have a Natalie.

He hadn’t shown up in our class.

He hadn’t tried to contact me in any way.

“I’m sure he’s fine,” she reassured me one
afternoon during a commercial break of some sitcom we both liked. “He’s
probably just working through things on his own. The bastard will come around,
and everything will be fine again.”

“He’s not a bastard,” I told her.

“Technically, he is!” She chirped up. “Guy’s
parents never married, right? So that makes him a total bastard. It’s the
textbook definition.”

“Fine. He’s a bastard, then,” I grumbled.

Natalie turned to face me with welling
concern. Before she opened her mouth, I saw the impending, heartfelt lecture
spring to life in her eyes. “Look, Clara…”

“Don’t.” I cut her off, backing the word up with
a glare. “I don’t want to hear it.”

“We both know that I might be a bit
airheaded
sometimes, but even I can see
that you two love each other. You’re desperate for him, and I’ve seen the way
he looks at you! You can’t ignore that!”

I turned away, but she pushed the issue.

“Find a way! Reach out to him! You know that
he wants that!”

“Would you listen to yourself?” I asked her
bitterly. “What kind of person would I be if I asked him to set aside his
dreams for me? I can’t do that to him.”

“What was it again that he asked you to do,
right before you went all psycho on him?”

“I
didn’t
go psycho.”

“Clara, I
know
you. If he hasn’t tried to reach out to you at all, then you
totally
went psycho. Anyway, answer the
question.”

I ignored her insult. “He said to let him
make his own decisions.”

“And you didn’t. You made it for him.”

“He would have made the wrong one.”

“You know that for sure?”

I crossed my arms. “Yes.”

“And why’s that?”

I tried to turn away again.

“Answer me, Clara!”

I stood up and finally let loose.

“Because they’re
both
the wrong fucking decision! No matter how you look at it,
either choice is
wrong!
Either I make
him go and uncomplicate
both
of our
lives… struggle to get over him… not daring to think what life would be like if
we were together…”

“Or what?” She demanded.

Defeat
filled my veins when I looked at
her.

“Or… we get together, living some twisted
double life around our parents and grandparents, unable to be
really
together without them judging or
disowning us… until he inevitably resents choosing this life over traveling
around the world.”

We were silent for a while. The sitcom had
come back on in the meantime, and the laugh track occasionally clashed with the
atmosphere.

“You can’t just let this go without
trying
,” Natalie pleaded quietly.

I didn’t have a response for that.

“Listen to me, Clara,” she continued. “So
there are some kinks. It’s not easy. I get that.”

I bitterly shook my head, and she ignored my
response to get out her point.

“Yeah. It’s a total mess and it sucks that
the two of you are stuck in this unfair clusterfuck. But you
can’t
just let this thing slip out
between your fingers without a fight. You know he makes you happy, and it
sounds like you make
him
happy too.
Just
talk
to him. Who knows what’s
going on with him? If he’s dropped off the face of the earth, he’s obviously in
a dark place. Maybe he needs you.”

“I can’t,” I pleaded.

“Clara,
talk
to him
,” she insisted gravely.

I slumped down into my sofa next to her, and
my frustration broke down into sobs. Natalie held me close while I cried it
out, and when I lifted my face she had a tissue ready.

“Don’t think for a moment that I don’t want
to,” I replied, gratefully taking it from her hand. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe
he needs me right now. But this is short-term pain for long-term gain. He’s got
a life, Nat, and he’s got dreams. Oh, if you’d seen the look in his eyes when
he was telling me about them. I can’t take that away from him.”

“Even if he goes,” she whispered, “if you two
haven’t made up, what makes you think he’ll be happy? What if his feet take him
across the world, fueled from a place of anger and despair?”

“Then that’s his choice,” I answered.

“No, it’s not. That’ll be what you did to
him.”

We sat in silence for the next episode, but
the night was gone. That’s why I didn’t try to stop her when she picked up her
purse and kicked her heels back on.

“Just think about it,” Natalie told me when
she kissed my cheek goodbye. “You might be making a huge mistake here.”

“It’s a mistake either way,” I shrugged.

After a solemn look in my eyes, she was gone
out the door, just like Dalton.

For the second time in about a week, I had
driven someone away from the apartment – leaving me alone with miserable
thoughts.

You will probably not be surprised to hear
that solitude
plus an abyss of
depressing thoughts is not exactly a fantastic combination.

For the rest of the day I sat there on that
couch, letting the TV mindlessly play in front of me.
Maybe Natalie’s right,
I found myself thinking.
She hasn’t really steered me wrong yet…

But I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

I knew what Dalton would say if we talked
about it. He’d convince me that we could make it work. He’d find a way to talk
me down, back into his arms, just shelving the problem for now.

No,
I thought to myself.

I have to be strong for him… for
both of us.

A slight rumbling pulled my attention away. I
glanced over at my phone to see a number I didn’t recognize.
Nope, not the time,
I thought to myself.

Instead, I tried to embroil myself into the
television. I was actually starting to chuckle at a few of the jokes when the
phone rang again.

Same number.
I ignored it again.

Not two minutes later, it rang again, and
then again. I was starting to get frustrated now, but the caller wasn’t letting
my voicemail pick up.

It was on the fifth call that I bitterly
snatched the phone up, paused Netflix, and answered.

“You’ve got the wrong number!”

“Oh, I think I have the
right
number…”

My breath caught in my throat.

“…
Jeremy?
”

“Yeah, it’s me,” my ex-boyfriend smoothly
whispered down the line. “I switched phones a few weeks back. Glad to see that
your number still works, because it
didn’t
before…”

“I blocked you,” I angrily told him. “Just
like I’m going to in just a moment.”

“Before you do that, I wanted to talk to you
about something,” Jeremy coolly stated. “Can you give me just, like, five
minutes of your time? For old time’s sake?”

Right then and there, I knew that I should
hang up. But I was weak and upset, and something inside me seized up.

“Look, what do you want?”

Jeremy paused. “Clara, you sound upset.”

“Yeah, well, it’s been a rough couple of
days,” I bitterly mentioned. “So just go ahead and tell me whatever you want to
tell me. Not five minutes. You’re getting
two.
Clock’s ticking.”

“No, that’s not important right now,” Jeremy
replied, sounding almost concerned. “What’s
much
more important to me is that you’re okay. Are you okay? You sound like
you’re about to cry.”

“Just leave me the fuck alone,” I growled.

“Look, I know we didn’t exactly end… on a
good note, but I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am,” Jeremy murmured. “And
we don’t ever have to speak again… if that’s what you really want. But I’ve
changed, Clara. I was such a fool to let you go…”

Is this SERIOUSLY happening right
now?

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I
half-chuckled. “After all this time, you choose
now
to apologize for that shit? You seriously hurt me, Jeremy. I
didn’t think I’d
ever
get over what
you did to me. I’m only
just
becoming
okay with it now… or, I thought I was.”

“I know,” he replied. “I was a serious
asshole. I deserved you dumping me. That’s exactly what it took for me to see
the truth…”

 
Oh, no. Don’t you DARE.

“…That I love you, and I’m just lesser
without you. You make me complete, Clara. You always did.”