Chapter 48

CHAPTER48

“I’m trying to help you!”

“You’re trying to piss me off!” Cayley yelled as she let the snowball in her hand fly.

“Same thing!” Sean snapped, ducking out of the way and-

“Oh, come on!” Cayley said as she suddenly found herself thrown over a shoulder that definitely belonged to a James boy.

“This is for your own good,” Sean said, hissing in pain as he joined them.

“It really is,” Craig, the traitor, seconded as she was carried back inside her apartment building and straight into her apartment where Mr. James stood waiting along with Johnny and Brian.

“Everything all set?” Craig asked as he headed for her room.

“They’re not getting out of there,” Johnny said as Craig carried her into her bedroom and dropped her on the bed with a grunt.

As soon as she was done bouncing, Cayley moved to climb off the bed and make the James boys regret manhandling her when she saw Bryce tied to a chair in the middle of her room, looking incredibly pissed.

Good.

That made two of them, Cayley thought as she shifted her glare to his brother as she moved to climb off the bed and get out of there before it was too late. That was followed by her falling back on the bed with a groan when she spotted Sean standing in the doorway, shooting her a wink as he closed the door behind him, leaving her trapped with the man that wanted nothing to do with her.

Great.

“I really need a new best friend,” Cayley muttered as she stared up at her ceiling, not bothering to check the door, knowing that it would be pointless.

For several minutes, she lay there, regretting her decision not to take up her father’s invitation to spend Christmas with him and-

“Cayley, I-” Bryce started to say, but she didn’t want to hear it, didn’t want to talk to him, and right now, she wanted to pretend that it wasn’t killing her to be this close to him and not be able to touch him.

“I’m not talking to you,” Cayley said, determined to spend whatever time that she was stuck in here glaring up at the ceiling, mentally going over all the things that she was going to have to do, find a new job, a new place, and-

Decided that she’d rather think about this in the bathroom. Struggling not to cry because she refused to cry over the big jerk watching her every move again, Cayley climbed off the bed and rushed to the bathroom, where she slammed the bathroom door shut and fell back against the door as the first sob broke free. She covered her face with her hands as she slid down to the floor as the tears flowed freely down her face.

She loved him and he wanted nothing to do with her.

She just…

She just wished that it didn’t hurt this much.

When the tears finally dried up, Cayley climbed to her feet and made her way into the shower, where she wrapped her arms around herself and tried not to think about the man in the other room. She would never forgive Sean for doing this to her. After all the bullshit that he’d put her through over the years, he’d finally managed to cross the line.

Long after the water began to cool, Cayley stood there, staring down at the floor before she reluctantly turned the water off and wrapped a towel around herself. She took her time drying off and getting dressed while she struggled not to cry again. As soon as she walked into her bedroom, she was going to walk to the door and say whatever it took to get Sean to open that door.

It took her several minutes, but she finally managed to make it to the bathroom door without crying, and after slowly exhaling, Cayley opened the bathroom door and-

“She never loved any of us,” Bryce said hollowly, taking her by surprise.

“What?” Cayley asked, noting the pained expression on his face as he watched her.

“My mother,” Bryce said, swallowing hard. “She never loved us. She tried, but she just couldn’t do it.”

“Of course, she loved you,” Cayley said, but even as the words left her mouth, she knew that it wasn’t true.

She didn’t remember her own mother, but she knew without question that her mother loved her, but Bryce’s mom…

“She never wanted us.”

* * *

“DidI ever tell you why I hated Christmas?” Bryce asked, watching as the woman that was breaking his heart stood in the doorway, unable to look at him.

“No,” Cayley said, looking completely fucking lost as he sat there, struggling to get the sounds of her crying behind that bathroom door out of his mind.

He’d never felt more fucking helpless than he had sitting there, tied to a fucking chair, forced to listen as she cried because of him. He-

God, he was really going to fucking do it, Bryce thought, feeling sick to his stomach as he finally forced the words out of his mouth. “I used to love Christmas. More than anything. Every Christmas Eve, I would wait until my parents went to bed before I snuck downstairs and hid behind the Christmas tree waiting for Santa to come, and every year, I would fall asleep before he came.”

“That last year, I woke up to hear my father talking to my mother. It took me a few minutes to figure out what he was saying, but once I did, I crawled out from behind the tree just far enough so that I could watch them. I watched my father beg her to stay, pleaded with her to wait until after Christmas, fucking begged her not to do this to us, but she didn’t fucking care.”

“Bryce…”

“She just stood there, watching him with pity as she told him that she didn’t love him, never had and when he begged her to stay for us, she told him that she’d never been able to make herself love us. She kept telling him how much she hated him, how he’d ruined her life, how she wanted so much more than he could give her, all while he was begging her to stay and not to do this to us on Christmas. He begged her to wait, told her that he would give her the divorce, anything that she wanted as long as she didn’t do this to us on Christmas. He didn’t want her to ruin Christmas for us, but she wouldn’t listen.”

“Oh, my God.”

“When she grabbed her bag and headed for the door, I panicked. I stumbled over the presents to get to her and threw myself at her. I begged her to stay. I told her that I didn’t care about Christmas and that they could take my presents back, that I would be good, anything to get her to stay. She didn’t even bother saying goodbye. She just left my father for that asshole and…”

“Your father loves you,” Cayley said as she climbed onto his lap and cupped his face in her hands.

“Yes, he does,” Bryce said hoarsely as he thought about that morning. The way that his father picked him up and held him as he cried, how his father kept telling him how much he loved him, that it wasn’t his fault, and promised him that he would never leave them.

“Your brothers and sister don’t know what happened, do they?” Cayley asked, gently caressing his face with her fingertips.

“We made sure that they didn’t find out that she left us until after Christmas, and even then, we never told them what she said. I don’t want them to know, Cayley,” Bryce said, swallowing hard as he looked into kind, warm eyes that were nothing like his mother’s.

“And last night, you thought history was repeating itself,” Cayley guessed correctly while he sat there, unable to take his eyes off her.

“Yes,” Bryce said hollowly, watching her as the realization of what he’d almost lost slowly sank in and-

“Hershey Symphony bar and Gremlins.”