“Unbelievable,” he muttered as he walked out of the kitchen.

I couldn’t help but chuckle. “You hide his helmet?”

“He wrote off his Ducati last year in a crash, and broke his wrist in the process. It was storming out. Every time I see it rain, I hide his helmet. He keeps his bikes here because his apartment’s car port isn’t big enough apparently.”

“He’s got a Ducati?” Daniel perked up.

I gave him a smack on the shoulder. “Glad that’s what you heard amid the story of his bike crash.”

Lucinda laughed. “Boys and their toys.”

Eighteen

The rest of the breakfast was lighter now that Jaxon was gone. I didn’t have to bite my lip in fear of anything slipping. We made small chat. Lucinda took a good liking to Daniel, shooting me approving eyes every time he cracked a joke or showed me affection.

When we finished our breakfast, we helped with the dishes, and then I left Daniel for a few minutes to fetch my purse and charger in case my phone died at my mother’s house. On our way out the door, Lucinda handed me a spare house key in case she wasn’t home when I returned. I liked that she just assumed I’d come back for the night knowing full well that I needed a room again.

I climbed into Daniel’s flashy sports car – boys and their toys indeed – and directed him to my mother’s place. He was unusually silent all the way there, heavy in thought. I wondered if he got the vibe that I was withholding something from him. I just couldn’t relax around him, and my fidgeting was noticeable.

I was delighted to find that the skip was right on the front lawn as promised. I led Daniel inside and we started the process of gathering useless junk that wasn’t sellable and tossing it in the skip. It was definitely better having someone around. It didn’t leave me time to think about my mother, which I’d been dodging lately. I couldn’t think about her for longer than a minute at a time without feeling a crowd of negative thoughts. I was still in shock about her death. It hadn’t hit me at all. It was made worse in the fact I hadn’t even gone to her damn funeral.

In the middle of tossing junk away, Daniel loaded up the clothes and all the small things I’d put aside for charity and, having called up a local charity service, he made a few trips dumping the stuff off. He then returned with two cups of coffee and two sandwiches.

“We‘ve been at it for a couple hours,” he said, handing me my sandwich. “Take a breather. I noticed you barely ate this morning.”

I took the sandwich and unrolled it, smiling like a kid that he’d picked up my favourite: chicken and avocado with cheddar cheese in a thick bread roll. “Thank you,” I said.

I took a seat on the black leather couch and looked around the living room. Everything had been cleared away. All that was left were bare furniture that would be given to the shop owner tomorrow when he swung by… which I hoped he remembered. I nibbled on my sandwich, but my appetite was still gone.

Daniel was sitting on an armchair facing me, and his eyes never left me. He studied me too intently than I would have liked, making me extra self-conscious.

“So,” he started quietly, taking a bite out of his ham and cheese sandwich, “that Jaxon guy is pretty interesting.”

I stopped chewing my tiny bite and shrugged. “I guess.”

“You knew him pretty well, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“You going to keep giving me short answers?”

“What is it that you’d like me to say exactly?”

“I’m not trying to put you on the spot, babe. It’s just… the way he looked at you, and some of the things he said while we ate, it was fairly obvious there was…” He paused and twisted his lips. “…more than meets the eye.”

“I grew up with Jaxon,” I explained. “I’ve known him for as long as I can remember. He saved me from a bully when I was eight and then took me under his wing. We’d been really good friends for a number of years.”

Narrowing his eyes, he said, “I know you were with him, Sara. I saw the photos on the wall when you were getting your purse. He took you to prom, didn’t he?”

He’d seen the photos in the living room. Damn. “Yeah, he took me to prom. That was when…” I inhaled sharply, feeling a horrible jab of pain in my chest. “That was the night we decided to give it a go at a relationship.”

He didn’t respond, but he continued to look at me, waiting for me to continue. Well, it’d been two damn years of sleeping with Daniel and holding back the story behind my bleeding heart. It was time to unload a little bit, or whatever I could without breaking to pieces.

“Everything was perfect,” I said. “He was perfect. He took me out to Winthrop and he got us a small little apartment. Then he did something he’d always vowed never to do: work under someone else. He was willing to change for me, and had all this money aside to help us through so I didn’t have to…” I breathed hesitantly again. “…so I didn’t have to work. Anyways, long story short, I fucked it all up because I’d brainwashed myself into believing I couldn’t depend on someone that might break my heart. I got all messed up, and then I was angry all the time, and violent. I was horrible to him.”

“So he left you, like you always thought might happen.”

I laughed humourlessly. “No, actually, I was the one that left him.”

Daniel gave me a perplexed look. “Why?”

“Because he loved me too much to let me go. He never stopped believing in us, even while I was on my tirade. I was destroying our relationship, and I was scared that it would to be too late to fix things if I stuck around. I was sick and tired of hurting him, and I knew he would do better without me.

“I did what was best for him. I left him after a horrible fight. I mean, I… totally left him, like packed my shit and walked out without a goodbye. I saw him for the first time three days ago since that night. And, well, you saw it yourself, I was right all along. He turned his life around and my leaving him was the best thing that ever happened. He’s got everything now.” Saying it out loud just reaffirmed it all. He had turned into a success, albeit one that had some criminal tendencies under his belt, but still, he was all he ever dreamed of being. Because of me. Because I didn’t hold him back.