Wasted Time (The Steel City #1)

11. Penny

CHAPTER ELEVEN

penny

I didn't go home for Thanksgiving or Christmas.

I didn’t go home in the summer, either.

Doing that is basically committing a cardinal sin in the friend group, but it felt like the right thing for me to do. Not only was I busy packing my life up and moving to a new city, but it had to be done to protect my inner peace.

I don’t know how to explain it. I needed to keep my space to diffuse some of the tension. It’s funny that one conversation could fester into something so painful, but that’s exactly what happened.

Declan had already hurt my feelings in the bar. Then, he doubled down in my childhood bedroom. But it was that text that really broke this all to smithereens.

The idea of plastering on a smile and continuing to act fine after that message seemed like too heavy of a task. It was the final straw, the knife straight into my heart—plunged and twisted. He never even attempted to reach out and apologize for it.

So, I stayed away. I had to. If I hadn’t, it would have been a war.

It’s easier to get over my rift with Declan that way, being far enough removed. It’s like the golden ‘no contact’ rule but for friends. Not seeing him face-to-face made him unable to swindle his way back through my guards. He’s good at that. He tends to act like he doesn’t even see them. Like they aren’t even there. He charms his way right back into my good graces like my boundaries are made of jelly.

And most of the time, I let him.

Avery thinks by not coming home, I’m also punishing her. Being the angel that she is, she comes to visit me instead. It’s weirdly refreshing to have her all to myself in London. Especially because I don’t particularly like living in London at all.

I tried it. Got the good job I wanted, got comfortable in the new city where I’m supposed to make a life in.

It’s not home. It’s never going to be home. Home is where my friends and family are, or home is Windsor. London, Ontario just doesn’t fit the bill.

I’m not trying to punish Avery by not visiting, I promise. I’m not even punishing Declan. I’m just trying to fortify my boundaries and heal from a painful situation—my therapist’s suggestion.

Cutting Declan out of that picture was rude, but it was nothing in comparison to the text he had sent me. I regretted it the next day, but the damage was already done by then. I blame the wine that was running through my system when I was posting it. Then, that text message came, and I was so mad that I made a rash decision. I unfollowed him.

He clearly still hasn’t learned that his words can hurt, and that hurting people has consequences. He can’t just smile and make everything go away. He can’t flash those dimples, pull me into his arms, and remind me that we can’t ever be rid of each other because we’re family. That isn’t real life. When someone hurts you, you’re allowed to be hurt.

Deleting him wasn’t kind. It might have even been a bit too far. But it made it remarkably easier to heal from our argument. I had intended for this to be temporary, but now I am not so sure that it can be. That text message broke my heart a bit. It told me how he really feels about me.

He thinks I’m shit.

Isn’t that sweet?

I spent the beginning of the new year moving house, putting down roots in a new city, and securing a new job for a new company. I said goodbye to my home, my second set of friends, and to Lydia and my coworkers. It was miserable, but I tried to plaster on a smile and think about the positives.

This is just the next chapter in my life. It isn’t the end of the world, right?

It feels like it.

I loved Windsor. I loved my house and truly adored my job in that city. I made a name for myself in that company. People leaned on me, and they respected my opinion. I was making good headway to becoming Creative Coordinator. That hope is gone. I might have scored a higher-paying job with my new company, but it won’t be as prestigious as the coordinator position that was just out of reach.

I had some good friends in Windsor, too. I had relationships that didn’t feel forced or fake. It was the closest thing to home that I’ve ever built away from home. That’s all gone now. All of it.

While the crew sent me texts about all things London, excited for the change, and while they mailed me gifts for the new house or asked for a FaceTime call to see the place, I suffered in silence and pretended like this was fine. It will be eventually, I’m sure. But it felt like I lost a lot of important things last year, and now I had to start this new year losing even more.

The opportunity that Gavin received was far too good to pass up, and although it stung, I knew that I had to follow him. He was going, that much was certain. I had a choice to make: follow or have an extremely hard conversation about the future if I didn’t.

He’d been putting in effort. Therapy sessions were going well, and he seemed to be actively trying to be a better partner. How could I abandon him after I screamed for a life raft, and he threw me one, pulling me back to shore?

But I still hate London.

There was one silver lining, though. For a bit. A big one.

Surprisingly, Gavin and I got better after the move . Stronger . We started laughing again and spending quality time together in the ways we used to. We put effort into us. My cup began filling up again without me even realizing that it was happening. The change in scenery seemed to bring a change in him, and I was suddenly very grateful for the choice I made.

I started to enjoy spending time with him like I used to. I looked forward to coming home from work and seeing him. Whether we sat on the back porch under blankets or sprawled out on the couch to watch trashy reality TV, I felt happy again. I was going to bed with a partner, not a stranger. I could breathe again .

We were still lacking in vital areas. I am not naive enough to pretend that those issues vanish overnight, but we started moving in a good direction. I was finally beginning to feel a bit secure for the first time in years. All of the pain and all of the time I spent powering through my emotions felt worth it.

We talked about marriage. We talked about maybe moving back to Windsor in a few years if his job permits it. When I explained to him that besides home, Windsor is the closest place that has ever felt like somewhere I belong, he told me with no judgment that we’ll plan for Windsor to be our end game. I swear, I almost cried with relief.

London just isn’t the same, and even though we haven’t been here very long, I know that it won’t change.

I felt myself living for me again, rather than desperately existing to keep us on the same path. We met at a fork in the road, and we made the decision to continue down the same trail together.

Then fall hit, and the universe gave me one, big, uno reverse card, because grown men don’t change. They’re just good at pretending that they do.

Gavin started to retreat. He started spending far too much time at work and less time at the house. He stopped smiling again, even when I catered to his humour in detriment to my own. He stopped answering my questions with intent, and seemed to brush off my every word as if my voice was exhausting in itself.

He just stopped trying. Again. Yet throughout, he claims he is fine.

He is always fucking fine.

Unfortunately for him, I know what the word ‘fine’ really means.

It is always the same excuse: he’s tired. Dealing with him for all these years makes me pretty in tune with his behaviour. It’s more than that. It is more than just being tired.

It’s everything.

The problem with ‘everything’ being the issue? There is no possible way to fix it.

I have become a nuisance in his life again without even realizing it. I’m suddenly more of a responsibility than a priority. I can’t do anything right, but I am not really doing anything wrong, either. I’m not sure I can explain the emotional torture of constantly fearing you’ve stepped over the line when you haven’t even moved an inch in any direction.

The conversation is the same every damn time.

“Are we okay?”

“Yeah, why wouldn’t we be?”

“I don’t know. You seem distant.”

“I’m fine, Penny. You asking me five hundred times a day if I’m fine is what’s making me not want to talk.”

And so, we don’t talk about it. Ever. At all. I just live each day hoping that this is the day he’ll snap out of it. I walk on eggshells in a house that I clean the floor of every single day.

I’m not sure why I am capable of speaking up for myself to everyone else but Gavin. I don’t know when it started, and how it got this bad, but I’ve become an entirely different person with him. The strength that I pride myself on embodying in my day-to-day life is smothered out the moment that it comes to him.

Which brings us to today. The day that everything changes.

I drop the mail on the entryway table as I walk into the house after work. That familiar lick of unease slides down my spine. His shoes are sat neatly on the carpet, aligned perfectly. Somehow and with no logical explanation, I just know that he’s been home for a while.

There is a sense of dread that is watered and blooms each time this man changes his demeanor in any way. It sends me into fight or flight mode. It has me bracing for impact and preparing to be destroyed.

I know him better than I know myself. That’s what happens when you give someone all the important parts of yourself and leave yourself with the bare minimum. Even with the slightest changes in tone over text, even by the way he walks around the house, I know when he’s about to hurt me.

That’s why I know with confidence as I step into the living room that he is going to hurt me tonight.

He’s sitting on the couch by the window, one leg on top of the other, his ankle balancing on his knee. The TV is off. His phone is on the table, face down. There is nothing but silence and the sound of him ripping threads off the throw blanket on the back of the sofa.

He’s been waiting for me.

“Hey,” I say cautiously, swallowing the anxiety in the pit of my stomach.

Perhaps I’m overreacting. He told me that just days ago when I said something felt off, when I asked him if he was angry with me. He said that I’m making something out of nothing. That I need to let it go.

All my instincts are telling me I am right, but he’s spent so much time convincing me that I’m wrong that I allowed a little seed of hope to be planted. Perhaps I was overthinking. Perhaps I still am.

I stop in the middle of the room. For some reason, I can’t approach him. I can’t even sit on the other end of the sectional. I won't allow myself to get comfortable before he tears my heart out, and I know, I just know that he’s about to do just that.

Gavin’s dark eyes are locked onto me. They’re glassy, but not from tears.

He gestures to the couch. “Come and sit.”

Alarm bells are blaring in my ears. His tone is soft, but somehow condescending. There’s no care in that tone, no love.Not for the first time, I’m reminded that he has the capability of being two very different people.

My skin prickles.

I want to leave.

Nothing has even happened, and I want to get into my car and drive as far away as I can from this place.

From him.

“Spit it out,” I bite out quietly, tossing my keys onto the table between us.

His brows shoot upward.

This wasn’t a part of his plan. He didn’t envision anger from me, only tears. That irks him. I can see it on his face.

I stare at him when he says nothing. “Go on then. Say what you have to say.”

“Penny,” he sighs, rolling his eyes. He drops his head backward a bit, like I’m exhausting him, and I force myself not to react. I will not give him the satisfaction of having me unwind before I even know what he’s going to say.

He’s already acting like I’m the one who is being hard to deal with.

“Please, Gavin, prove me right. Show me I was on the right track when I asked you what the problem was repeatedly over the last few weeks.”

His eyes narrow. There he is, the mask finally slipping from the sad and regretful partner he had just been masquerading as. He can recite this conversation one million times in his head, but I won’t be following his script. I’ve done that before like a pathetic idiot, far too many times to count. I acted the way I knew he wanted me to, just to avoid a fight.

Not this time. I can’t do that anymore. I’m tired.

“We have to end it.”

There it is.

I don’t even react. I can’t. I just stare at him.

Inwardly, something big, dark, and painful opens up. It rips me apart at the seams, tearing slowly and hitting all my vital arteries as it does.

Hearing him refer to our long-term relationship as it feels icky.

I’d be lying if I say I didn’t see this coming. I feel like a part of me has been waiting for it for years. With bated breath, I lived with the constant fear of expecting the other shoe to drop. This was the other shoe. He hung a breakup over my head for far too long without ever actually saying that that’s what he was doing.

It’s finally happened.

I fooled myself into believing he’d eventually be a man that has enough love in his heart to give it to another person, but he isn’t. He never will be. He’s always had one foot teetering on the exit, even when the rest of his body was inside, whispering empty promises in my ear. He won’t change. Not now. Not ever.

He leans forward, his elbows on his knees and rubs his palms together. He keeps his gaze glued to mine. Waiting. Hoping.

For me to fall apart.

“Okay,” I say.

“Okay?” he asks, cocking a brow.

“Yeah, okay, ” I snap. There’s a bite in my voice, but I can’t stop it.

How dare he?

How fucking dare he, when I have been transparent and communicative and have given him every single piece of my heart and my patience over the last few years? I tried to get him to talk. I wanted to fix whatever had been broken. He repeatedly told me there was nothing broken, nothing cracked.

He sat through therapy and played along. Acted like he wanted to be there. Charmed the therapist just like he charmed me, but stopped following her guidance and using her tools the second that he could. The second I was comfortable again.

How can I see the damage and tend to it if he keeps slapping a bandage over it to shield it from me? And why was it always up to me to fix things?

“That’s it?”

“What do you want, Gav?” I say, exasperated. I drop my hands to my side and stare at him. “Do you want me to grovel? I don’t feel like it. Do you want me to cry? Do you need me to react in a specific way to make this easier for you?”

His lips tilt downward. “No, but I figured you’d have questions.”

“I had a lot of questions over the past year. All of which, you brushed off. You know, if you weren’t happy, I gave you a magnitude of opportunities to say so. Instead, you fill my head with promises of better things and our future and wait for me to move across the province and quit my fucking job!”

I erupt then, and I quickly shut my eyes to ground myself.

He doesn’t even flinch. No, he just looks at me. There is some twisted satisfaction dancing behind those cold brown eyes, finally comforted by the fact that I snapped.

What a dark, sad head to have to live in.

He stops rubbing his hands together and dips his chin. That’s all the apology I'll get.

“I don’t think I love you.”

Everything stops.

Okay.

Breathe in, Penny.

Ouch.

Gavin watches me carefully as those words hang between us. Angry or not, hearing him say something so cruel so bluntly is like a knife to both the heart and the back.

He says it because he knows that those words will hurt. They’ll get a reaction when I otherwise gave him nothing.

Those words shock me, but they shouldn’t. Thinking about it now, maybe the signs were there all along. When someone starves you of your needs, the bare minimum starts to feel like love.

I can’t find the words to respond to that. Emotion is clawing at my throat, and I’m far too busy trying to suppress it so that when I leave here, I know he did not get all he wanted from me. He already has all I could have given him without hurting myself. He does not deserve any more.

I already know that I’m the one who is leaving.

I don’t want to be in this house, and it doesn’t look like he’s packed a bag or prepared to leave himself. He also assumed that he would stay where he is comfortable, and that I’d figure out where I should go.

It’s almost funny how selfish he is. How much I hadn’t noticed when I was overthinking every other part of our relationship.

“I don’t know if I ever really loved you,” he continues.

My heart constricts in my chest.

Please stop.

Please stop. It feels like I’m dying.

It’s cruel. What he is doing is cruel.

I cannot believe this man across from me was the same man who would make forts in the living room of my house after I had a bad day. He is somehow the same guy who learned I couldn’t sleep during thunderstorms, so he showed up unannounced every single time with snacks and warm arms.

“That’s great, Gavin,” I sigh, reaching forward to take my keys back off the table.

We are no longer together. I do not have to sit here and put up with this.

“I think I realized at my work party,” he continues, as if I hadn’t spoken at all. Not once has he looked away. He’s drinking this in. “All of the guys were so proud of their girlfriends and their wives, and I just… I didn’t look at you and feel proud, Penny. I wasn’t excited at the thought of being with you.”

I go still.

This isn’t just cruel… this is something worse. This is masochistic. This isn’t just him breaking up with me, this is him attempting to kill me in the process. He wants to break me. I’m not his shiny toy anymore, so he’ll ensure nobody else can play with me either.

“If we stayed together, we’d just be kidding ourselves. I think we both know that.”

My ears are beginning to ring, my brain trying to block out what he is saying in an attempt to save myself—save whatever is left of my heart. The pain is visceral. I wonder if I’ll survive this.

We stare at each other. I know my face is flushed red. I can feel it creeping up my neck and taking root in my cheeks. I’m angry, but I’m also mortified, and that’s a feeling that I’d rather die than feel in front of others. Even him.

Especially him.

Ten years. Ten fucking years of my time, and you don’t think you’ve ever loved me?

You’ve never been proud to be with me?

What in the fuck was the point?

If I was in the kitchen right now, I think I’d take a knife out of the block and throw it. I’d aim for his head.

“You’ll be okay,” he says softly, nodding slowly. “You’ll find someone someday, Penny. Someone better for you. Someone who will marry you—something I really don’t think I ever would have done. If we keep at this, we’re just going to be wasting more time.”

He’s looking at me like I’m a child that he’s trying to gentle parent. It makes me sick.

There are one million retorts on the tip of my tongue, and they’re mean . They’re cold and brutal and go down to every insecurity he has. I could spew them. They would hit their mark and scar his heart.

But I do not speak.

I do not utter a single word.

I loved this man. I have loved him for a very long time. I would never hurt him the way he is hurting me. This is one fight I will gladly bow out of. At least I’ll look back on this moment and know that I gave him nothing.

“I’m going to pack a bag.”

I leave him on the couch, bewildered by my lack of response. I hurry upstairs, my adrenaline crashing. The tears are burning now. I don’t think it’s because I’ve just been dumped. I don’t think my head or my heart have even realized that has happened. It’s the words that he had carefully constructed to do the most damage that are chipping away at me, because they pried their way into my soul, just like he wanted them to.

He would never marry me ? Three weeks ago, he was telling me how he already had the dream venue picked for us. He was just asking for a few reference pictures because he wanted to be certain he knew the exact cut of the ring that I wanted.

He wasn’t proud of me? No, of course not. We were always celebrating his achievements and not mine. We were always proud of him. There wasn’t room for either of us to remember that I was here, and I was doing big things at the very same time .

I tear my gym bag out of the closet and pack enough for two weeks. I don’t even know what I’m tossing inside. I can’t seem to care. I can’t think. I just need to get out of this house and away from Gavin.

I storm by the door to the bathroom, and only then do I notice him leaning against the doorframe, watching. His arms are crossed in front of him.

Jesus, does he not understand space? Does he have to micromanage everything ? Is he waiting for a tear to drop so he can jerk off to the image later?

I gather my makeup and skincare into my travel bag. I drop shampoo, conditioner, my toothbrush, and the full tube of toothpaste. I’m being petty, I know it’s the last tube we have. Something about him having to go to bed with a dirty mouth pleases me.

I don’t know how long I’ll be gone, but I made up my mind at some point after he uttered the words ‘ I don’t think I love you ’, where I was going. There was never another option.

“You don’t have to leave, Penny,” he says as I force my makeup bag in with my clothes.

I bark out a laugh. He says that now, after I just packed my things?

“I’m going home,” I tell him with a look so lethal it might have the power to kill him.

I shove past him and rush back down the stairs.

I can’t breathe. I need air.

He follows at a snail’s pace, his steps sluggish. It’s like this whole situation is inconveniencing him. Everything he is doing is making me more and more furious. He could blink and I’d take it personally right now.

“You can’t drive eight hours right now. It’s almost three.”

“Fuck off,” I spit.

His eyes widen, his brows shooting upward.

Yeah, yeah, Gavin. I get it. I’m the crazy one for having feelings when you’re the one holding my heart in your hands after ripping it from my chest.

“Penny.”

“I’m going home.” I shove my feet in my boots.

He steps forward and reaches for me. I scurry backward in horror, like his touch has the power to burn my skin. He lifts both hands in front of him, stepping back.

“Penny. Come on.”

I ignore him, pulling on my coat. I shoot him one last look, trying my hardest to remember how his face evoked nothing but pain and rage for me in this moment. I cannot turn back. Ever.

“I am going home.”

I slam the door so loudly it sounds like he finally let off the shot he’d cocked, loaded, and aimed at my heart.