What I wanted to do was storm off and find him, demanding to know what was going on, but I felt defeated. Suddenly the weight of the last few months, the mess of my life, and all that I had lost hit me. I placed the phone in the locker, shut the door behind me, and turned around. One foot in front of the other, I found my way back toward the front of the station and ignored the curious stares of those as I passed.
In a haze, I walked toward my truck. I was done. I’d been conquered; there was nothing left in me.
Chapter Forty
Landon
Exiting the shower, I wrapped the towel around my waist and searched for my clothes. The place I had thought I’d left them was now empty, and I wondered had I laid them somewhere else.
The steam from the shower still fogged the mirrors and hung in the air as I continued to look around.
Exiting the bathroom, I almost slammed into someone and reached out to the wall at my side to brace myself with one hand. Gripping the towel tightly at my waist to refrain from dropping it, I heard a giggle.
“Had you waited a little longer, I could have joined you in there.” Holly bit her lip and allowed her gaze to scan over me. “Showers are so much more enjoyable when you have someone to wash your back.”
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“Came to see Nolan.” Reaching out toward me, she placed one finger to my abs, and I pushed her hand away without hesitation. The idea of her touching me disgusted me. “Or at least that’s what I told him.”
“This has got to stop.” I was not a violent man, nor aggressive when it came to women, but fuck, this was going on too long, and it had gone too far. “I don’t want you, and I will never want you. Do I have to fucking get a restraining order or press charges for stalking to get you to fucking understand that? You disgust me. I am in no way attracted to you. Even if I wasn’t in love with Chloe, I wouldn’t want you.”
“You don’t love her.” She acted as though I had offended her. Crossing her arms over her chest, it was the first time I’d seen her look hurt.
Maybe it was wrong of me to push hard, but all I could see when I looked at Holly was the bitch who had been causing my girl pain. The one who had been looking for every weak point of Chloe’s and using it to her advantage. She was the bitch who had caused any amount of friction that Chloe and I had, and I was done. I was more than done.
“I do love her.” I stepped closer, staring her directly in the eyes to place as much emphasis on my words and their meaning as possible. “I’m so in love with her that I can’t breathe when she’s not at my side. She’s all I see, all I want, and one day I will ask her to marry me. Nothing or no one will ever fill the void her absence would leave within me. I love Chloe. I will never feel those things about you. Never have I nor never will I feel anything more for you than hate at this point. You are vile, and these attempts to get close to me, to plant yourself in my life, they’re desperate and a waste of fucking time. They will never work. I will never want you.”
Holly stared at me through angry slitted eyes. Her arms crossed over her chest, her mouth pressed in a tight line, and all I could think was maybe she fucking got it now.
“She stopped by a little bit ago.” A smug smile tugged at her lips. “I told her that you were in the shower where I’d left you. She didn’t seem too happy about that.” With that, Holly spun on her heels and walked out, leaving me replaying her words in my mind. She was attempting to get to me, to eat away at me. The longer I stood there, the more my nerves grew weary and suddenly my feet were in motion.
Taking two stairs at a time, I was breathing hard by the time I reached the main level. Searching for my phone, I found it tossed in the bottom of my locker where I know I had not left it. Bringing it alive, I felt my stomach lurch when the screen was filled with an image I knew wasn’t there before. An image at that point I knew had to be found by Chloe.
With shaking hands, I found her contact information and hit the call button, placing the phone to my ear. Each ring was more of a loud echoing ring, one after another, that only made me feel even more erratic inside.
“This is Chloe, leave me a message.”
The sweetness in her voice, I could almost picturing her smiling bright as she tried not to laugh while recording that greeting. Her innocence, her beauty, one that I knew, hell, I’ve witnessed it being crushed over those last few months.
How could I have been so blind? How did I not see what was taking place under my nose?
“Baby, I need you to call me, please, I don’t care what time. I love you.”
My chest felt tighter and tighter with each breath I took.
“Layne.” I looked up to find Mark, another guy from the crew, standing a few feet away. “You all right?”
“Was
