RUIN - Part Three (The RUIN Series Book 3) (2 page)

"I think I knew." I reach to grab the arm of the chair before I lower myself down onto the cushion. "It was the only thing that made sense to me, Parker."

He settles on the edge of the matching chair across from me. "I wasn't man enough to tell you at the time. It's not important anymore."

I study his face, soaking in the strong line of his jaw and the curve of his nose. He hasn't changed much since we first met in high school, seven years ago when he was only seventeen. The boyish glint that was always ever present in his eyes is fleeting now. It's lost completely in this moment, replaced by something that mirrors regret. Maybe it's shame or guilt.

I wipe away the last of my tears with the tissue Parker had brought back with him when he went to get me a bottle of water from the kitchen. We'd stood in silence after Ben had left both of us cautiously uncertain of how to begin talking about our failed relationship and what our futures hold.

"Who is she?" It's a question that has been poised at the edge of my tongue since the night he left. Back then, I didn't want to voice my belief that he was leaving me for someone else. He'd worked tirelessly to get me back into his bed in Boston. The notion that he'd throw all of that to the wayside to pursue someone else didn't fit. Now, looking back, I can't be certain that it wasn't just my self-esteem quieting my better judgment. The sensible parts of my heart knew there was someone else. He was too careless with me for it to be anything but that.

"Kayla." He throws his head back with a groan. "Does it even matter anymore? It's over."

He doesn't want it to matter but his decision to leave me for another woman changed my life completely. "I want to know."

"I met her at work." It's a start and judging by the endless pause that follows the words, it's where he wants this discussion to end.

"When?" I ask the question with no emotion. When I was sitting at the gate at the airport weeks ago waiting to board the flight that took me back to New York, I would have given anything for an honest answer to that question. They say that a woman's intuition is never wrong and mine knew, even if I chose to ignore it, that Parker was racing from the bed he shared with me into someone else's.

He scratches the back of his head, his eyes jumping from my face to the wall behind me. "It was before you moved back to Boston."

The words slice through me like a razor sharp edge. "You met her before I came back?"

"Baby," he begins before he leans forward to rest his elbows on his knees. "I was really mixed up back then."

"Did you want her when you begged me to move back to Boston to be with you?" I ask because my mind wants the answer, even if my heart doesn't feel anything when the question leaves my mouth.

He closes his eyes briefly and I see the answer there, in the silent pause. "She had a boyfriend back then."

"You wanted me back because you couldn't have her?" I don't want the question to sound as pathetic as it does. Everything that was scattered and mismatched within my mind for the past few months is now falling into place. "Did you beg me to come back here, Parker, because you were in love with someone you couldn't have?"

"I don't know if I loved her, Kayla," he qualifies. "I liked her and she told me she was involved with another guy."

The weight of his words rolls through me. "You told me you couldn't live without me. You said we were meant to be together."

"We are." He drops swiftly to his knees, his hands darting to my thighs. "I told you I made a mistake. When she broke up with her boyfriend I jumped at the chance to be with her. I thought she really loved me but we fought a lot. She was nothing like you."

He left me for another woman and once he realized she wasn't all fun and frolic, he decided he wanted me back? Is he really confessing that to me right now? "You want me back now because you don't want her?" It's the simplest way to express one of the most complicated questions I've ever asked him.

"Kayla." His chest expands beneath the blue t-shirt he's wearing as he draws a heavy, steady breath. "I chose the wrong woman weeks ago. I should have picked you."

How gracious of him to admit that now. "You left me for her, Parker. Why would I want you back?"

"You loved me the night I left." His eyes sprint over my face. "I saw it when you were crying. You begged me to stay with you."

I'll never forgive myself for that. It's been my deepest regret and I haven't shared it with anyone, not even Alexa. Admitting that I dropped to my knees and literally pulled at the leg of his jeans to get him to stay with me, is something I look back on now with disgust and pain. I never wanted to be that woman. I never wanted my life to be defined by any man and that night I tried desperately to make Parker stay with me. He had shaken me off like a bad habit and hadn't looked back before he slammed the door of this apartment and walked away.

"I wish I could go back to that night," I say the words softly, not wanting to give him any sense of power over me. "I wish I could change the way I acted."

"You acted from your heart." His index finger pats against my hand. "I'll never forget how you looked, Kayla. I've thought about it every day since then."

I've pushed it to the furthest recesses of my mind every day. If I'm being brutally honest with myself it changed who I am on a very fundamental level. It was my rock bottom and for the rest of my life I'll always remember that it was Parker who pushed me there. "I try not to think about it anymore."

"We don't need to." He smiles up at me. "Today is the first day of our new life together. Fate brought you back here, Kayla. We were always meant to be together."

We were never meant to be together. Love isn't supposed to rake you over the coals like this. It's not a game of hide and seek. Parker loves me when it's convenient for him. He's proven that enough times that falling back into the trap that is his empty promises will only stall my life again. I can't do this anymore.  I want the answers to my questions and then I want Parker to become a distant memory. "I need some answers, Parker and right now, you're the only person who can give them to me."

"If that's what it's going to take to get you back, ask away."

I should tell him, right here on the spot, that the chances of the two of us getting back together are level with the chances that I'm going to win the lottery someday. It's never going to happen. I can barely look at him without feeling anger and disgust. The idea of crawling back into a relationship with him is so foreign to me I can't even process it.

"When did you meet Ben?" I ask with quiet resolution. I need a jumping point to clear the hurdle that is his connection to Ben. I heard the fragmented edges of a conversation between the two of them. Now, I want Parker to fill in all those scattered blanks for me.

He leans forward again, tracing his thumb across my knuckles.  I don't pull back for fear of losing his desire to do what's right. I know he wants to share with me. I see it in his face. "It wasn't long ago, Kayla."

"How long?" I push because having a full understanding of when they met matters more to me than I'm willing to admit right now. I'm trying to convince myself that I want every single detail so I can carry it all back to Noah when I recount today's events to him. There's more to it than that. I need to know that the night in the hotel room and the days spent with Ben hold some meaning beyond his desperate need to regain Noah's attention.

He pulls his hand through his brown hair, his fingers separating the curly locks. "It was two or three weeks ago."

"Two or three weeks," I repeat back in a mumble. "Where did you meet him? Did he contact you?"

His hand glides from his hair over his face stopping to pinch the bridge of his nose. "I met him outside your apartment building. I was standing on the street when he came out of the building."

"How did you know where to find me?"

He shrugs. "I thought about going to see Alexa to ask her but I didn't want her to rail on me.  I thought you might have stayed in touch with your old boss so I stopped by there."

"Vivian told you where I live?" I ask before taking a drink from the bottle of water.

"She said I missed you by twenty minutes."  He leans back, smoothing his hands over the front of his shirt. "I had to get up the nerve to talk to you. I stopped at a bar by your place and had a few beers."

I doubt that anything would have turned out differently had I known Parker was only a few feet from the front door of my building just days ago. The fact that he confirmed that he left me for someone else would have come to light then. Seeing his gentle smile would have only been a brief reprieve from the inevitability of it all.

"Once I decided I was ready to talk to you, it was dark out." He glances at his wrist as if he's expecting to find a watch there. "It had to have been near ten. That's when I saw him."

"Ben was outside my building?" There's more surprise woven into the words than I intend. Although our time together was spent mostly in his apartment, he was at my place a few times.

"He almost ran into me when he opened the door." He rolls his eyes. "I was already feeling pretty good from the beers if you know what I mean."

He was bordering on drunk. I don't need him to spell it out for me. When we lived together, Parker would be passed out in bed after two or three beers. "I know," I offer because it's the step I need to take to keep Parker on this path with me. I want him to keep talking so the less I chime in, the better.

"I tried to get into with him." He rolls his hands into fists and darts them into the air between us. "I was on edge and pissed that he bumped me with the door."

Parker, always the charmer almost hit Ben? "You tried to punch Ben?"

"I egged him on but he just stood there with a smirk on his face."

That sounds exactly like the Ben I've come to know. The idea of him randomly getting in a fistfight with a stranger on the street is foreign to me. I feel a hint of shame wash over me thinking about Parker acting like an asshole. It's misplaced but it's a lingering leftover from all our years together when I had to witness that behavior first hand.

"He said I looked like I could use a beer." His tone is even. "I asked if he was buying and we went back to the bar."

I lock my eyes on his face. "You and Ben drank together at the bar by my place?"

He closes his eyes briefly. "It was for a few hours. He talked about his brother and some chick he was falling for. I wasn’t really paying attention."

I don't react. I can't. "What else did he talk about?"

"Nothing. He just listened while I confessed everything to him."

"Confessed what?" I push my hair back behind my ears suddenly feeling very overheated. "What did you tell Ben?"

He hesitates briefly as if he's searching for the right order to place his words. I've seen him do that before. It's a ploy he uses when he wants to soften the emotional blow of whatever he's about to say. He did it repeatedly the night he left me. "It was mostly about her."

"Her?" I don't even know her name. I don't need to know it but he's about to tell me.

"Elsie," he offers softly. "That's the woman I …"

"Yes," I interrupt. I don't want this discussion to jump into a tailspin and rocket off into a direction I don't want it to. "You talked to Ben about her?"

"I told him she left me that day," he begins before he stops himself. "I mean I told Ben that Elsie and I broke up."

I don't care. I truly don't care if Elsie walked out on Parker when he was begging her to stay. I've emotionally left. If I had any doubt about that before tonight, it's all been erased and replaced with a sense of quiet closure.

"I'm sorry, Kayla." He sighs before he continues, "I told Ben that I realized what a mistake I made and that I was in love with the girl I broke up with. I told him I was in New York to ask her to marry me."

"You told Ben that was me?" There's no excitement in the question at all. Right now, they are only empty words that are strung together to get me to the truth of what's going on. I'm still reeling from discovering that Ben has been using me as a pawn to get back into Noah's life. Knowing that he enlisted Parker's help to do that doesn't change anything about the way I feel. I don't want Parker in my life. I certainly don't want to be engaged to him.

"No." He hangs his head down. "I never said your name when we were at the bar. He didn't know it was you."

It's obvious that at some point the two of them realized my connection to them both. "When did Ben know I was the woman you were talking about?"

"I'd say about a week after that."

"A week?" I throw the question at him sharply. "I don't understand how you went from talking about me at a bar to agreeing to take money from him to stay away from me."

"It wasn't like that." His hand trails a path across his lap before it stops short of my knee. I'm grateful that he doesn't try and touch me. I don't know that I could resist the urge to pull back at this point.

"What was it like?"

"Kayla, please try and understand where my mind was back then."  His voice is no louder than a whisper. "I just wanted to ask you to marry me so we could start all over. So I could forget what a fucking idiot I'd been before you moved back to New York."

I see the vulnerability in his eyes. I know he's in pain. I know that he wishes that he could undo what happened between us but that's not possible anymore. Life has changed. I've changed. "I want to understand, Parker. I really need to."

His gaze drops to his lap. I watch his shoulders surge forward. "Ben offered to help me that first night at the bar. He didn't know me, Kayla, and he just up and helped me."

"Helped you?" I tilt my chin down hoping he'll catch a glimpse of me out of the corner of his eye. "How did Ben help you?"

He pulls his body back until he's facing me directly. "I told Ben that I wanted to ask the love of my life to marry me."

I work hard to not react to the words. "What did Ben say?"

His palm etches a path over his lips. "It's not what he said, Kayla. It's what he did."

I'm stuck. I want to know. I need to know but I'm scared that Parker is about to tell me that Ben concocted a plan to keep Parker from me because of his selfish agenda to get Noah back. I honestly don't know if I would have taken Parker back if he would have showed up at my apartment door with the beautiful ring I longed for, in his hand, and a marriage proposal on his lips. The idealistic part of me wants to believe I would have turned him down, but the romantic parts of my heart, know better.

"What did he do, Parker?" I ask for clarity, not for me, but for Parker. I want him to know that I need to know this. It is instrumental to my moving forward with my life. I have to sort out what happened between these two men before I can even think about talking to Noah and Alexa about this.

"He told me he believed in true love." He cocks his head to the side. "He said young love was worth fighting for."

It sounds like something Ben would say. His soul is soft and hopeful. I saw it myself when he cared for me after my fall. The man that tended to my wounds and nursed me back to health is so opposite of the man who I heard talking to Parker hours ago. They don't fit together, regardless of what my heart is still hoping for.

"I told him I had to go back to my hotel to sleep before I went to see my girl." His index finger taps my knee. "He told me we needed to make a stop first. He was feeling good too but he wasn't as drunk as me."

I look away to steel my emotions. Knowing that the man that I loved for years was getting drunk in a bar with the man I was beginning to fall for is already a lot to absorb. "Where did he take you?"

"To the bank, Kayla," he says in a rush. "We went to the automated teller machine."

"What? Why?" I spit the questions out so quickly they are almost indistinguishable from one another.

"He took out three thousand dollars and handed it all to me," he says hoarsely. "He said it was for the ring. He wanted me to get it so I could ask the woman I love to marry me."

My emotions swing to the side as if they've been slapped. "Ben just handed you the money to buy that ring?"

He drops his head into his hands. "I took it. I took his number too so I could pay him back but he told me it was his gift. He said he wanted to help make Elsie's dreams come true."