Unmarked: Sean's Story (Chosen #4) Read online

  “Lizzie, what’s up?” I answered immediately and briskly.

  “Oh, God, Sean. Nick and I just had the worst argument ever. He left. He just said he needed some space to think and I am so scared. We have been fighting so much and I don’t know what to do.”

  “Oh shit. I am sorry to hear that,” I said as I looked up at Aoife and shook my head no. This wasn’t life threatening. Life changing maybe but so was Kenpo for Aoife. By the looks of it, she was ready to throw a fit so we could get going.

  “Here. Let me call you back, okay? We were right in the middle of something but I will call you back, okay?” I begged Lizzie.

  “Please come over, Sean. I need my friend. I need my best friend.”

  I agreed with something and clicked off the phone.

  “So?” Aoife asked. “What is happening?”

  I looked up to her and tried to think of a way to make both girls have me. It was impossible and the quiet became too long for Aoife.

  “I have to go meet Lizzie,” I finally confessed. “Nick and Lizzie are having problems. She asked me to talk to her as a friend. She needs a friend.”

  Aoife crossed her arms even more across her chest in a protective stance. She wasn’t going to let me in at all. Was this it? I wouldn’t choose between a few weeks with the love of my life and a lifetime of friendship. They both needed to fucking chill.

  “So then you aren’t coming to karate then?”

  I shook my head as I grabbed my Ford baseball hat and started to head out the door.

  “I will drop you at Maverick’s and then be back to pick you up.” I said firmly as I pushed by her.

  “Don’t bother, Sean.” It was a cold backlash and honestly, I didn’t know she had it in her.

  “Don’t do this, Aoife. It is one class. One night. You can throw me down afterwards and teach me what I missed.” I tried to poke a little at her in fun to get her to chill. She wasn’t having any of that.

  “I mean, you can go to her. You can even drop me off because I will be late if I walk but don’t bother coming back.” I think I heard her gasp after she had said that – like maybe she hadn’t wanted to and it slipped out, like most of her other thoughts about me.

  I stopped walking. My breathing stopped as I tried to repeat what she said to me in my head over and over again. I turned around slowly and for the first time, I didn’t look at her with love or anything. I was stone. Stone Sean looked like a metal head, fucking bad ass that no one fucked with. She saw my look and cowered a little. I may have been scaring her but what the hell was she saying?

  “You prefer that I go home after I visit my friend? You don’t want me to come home to you, my girlfriend, because another person needs me to talk tonight?” I said succinctly and with raw anger.

  She shook her head and kept walking to the truck. “No. This class is just as important. We have a few weeks left. That’s it. Nothing more. We both know it, so go to Lizzie. You two can wallow in pity about how fucking tough life is. But no, I don’t want you to come back. You choose her? Then deal with your choice.”

  I knew we were both under stress because of the impending doom of our relationship but for her to cut it off now was fucking ridiculous. I blew out a breath and dragged my palms down my face.

  I didn’t need this shit.

  “Fine. I will swing back and grab my shit before I head out,” I said coldly. She wanted me out? She didn’t want to let me in? She didn’t even want me to visit her in Ireland? I wasn’t going to be that guy who begs. No way. I was a successful business owner and I had enough faith in myself that I was doing the right thing by being a friend tonight.

  When I dropped her at Mavericks, she went for the door.

  “Aoife. Aren’t you going to say goodbye?” I looked at her with a blank face. What game was she playing because it was obviously hurting her more than me. Fear was the root of all games. She didn’t think she was good enough. I had tried to show her so many times and in so many ways but you can’t make someone believe something that they don’t want to. I felt really sad.

  She shook her head and I saw her face split into a contorted look of pain. It looked like a soundless sob. I had felt that once. I held my breath because it was stuck at the back of my mouth and I tried to get the pain out with the expression. It was the day I found out my dad died. It hurt. It was pure, raw pain. I tried to grab for her so she would just let it out, but she gasped for air and jumped out of the car before I heard the first sob come from her.

  I watched her go into the school and immediately go to the right where the bathrooms were. If I chased after her now, it would create a scene. This unusual relationship was so terribly screwed already that I didn’t think it even mattered if I did.

  Driving towards Lizzie’s, I pushed return call and got her on the first ring. She told me to come up and everyone knew that I was on my way. She was bawling, too. What kind of advice did I have for a couple that had been married for years? I couldn’t even keep a woman for a few months and I would swim the Atlantic Ocean to be with her.

  I found Lizzie on the couch with a roll of toilet paper on her lap. She looked miserable but attempted a small smile as I walked in. I felt for her, I really did. Relationships were tough but I guess this was the first time I realized that even Nick and Lizzie weren’t diamonds – all sparkly and shiny all the time.

  “Where are the kids?” I asked, looking around the penthouse. I had never seen their place so quiet.

  “Niall went to the movies and Sammy is doing a sleepover with my parents tonight,” she answered numbly. She wasn’t crying in the moment but looked like she was just back from a complete mental breakdown.

  “So what’s happening?” I asked as I plopped myself on the coffee table across from her. I let out a big exhale. This was a shitty night and I was ready to commiserate.

  She looked up into my eyes and smiled. That gorgeous Lizzie smile that always made my heart beat a little faster. It used to make me want to grab her in my arms and kiss her until she fell in love with me, too. But not tonight. I didn’t feel anything except pissed that I couldn’t make everyone happy. I gave her a quick smile and nodded for her to talk.

  “Nick is always working, you know,” she said and the crying started up again. “I mean, we started the company and I loved it for a while but we haven’t had time to really enjoy one another. He is gone like three weeks out of the month and I get so fucking lonely.”

  “Where did he go tonight?” I asked, pulling off my cap, scratching my head, and placing it back on.

  “Studio, probably,” she cried. “But like I called you and you came right over. Why can’t he just take an extra week off to be with our family? To be with me? I am his wife!”

  “Well, maybe he really likes work.” I had no fucking clue. I had taken a week off of work for Aoife no problem and thought about doing it again before she dumped me tonight.

  “Why couldn’t I have fallen in love with you? You are the perfect guy.” Her whine told me that she was trying to make a joke about it and even though she didn’t know, she had epically failed. That shit was not funny.

  All air, breath, and thought stood still and I couldn’t even comprehend the words that had just spilled from this woman’s mouth. I had loved this woman with every inch of my being and had waited so fucking long for her to realize what she had just said in jest. She said it out of frivolousness and I think that was what killed me the most.

  I stared at her long and hard. I saw the imperfections of her character. The world was falling – no it was fucking crashing down – all around our friendship and she had no friggin’ clue. I was ready to explode and I didn’t know how to let it out. Laugh? Scream? Cry?

  I panicked. I got pissed. I was hurt and I wanted revenge. I wanted to throttle her. I wanted to hug her. I wanted to slap the bitch. I wanted to cry. She had taken all of those years of pushing back my own selfish thoughts and frivolously thrown them into my face, as if they meant nothing.

  It
was apparent from her sheepish smile and the small twitching of her lip that Lizzie wanted a laugh out of me. She wanted me to say, “Nah, I am a dick, Lizzie and we are just friends. You know that! Nick is the one that loves you with everything he is.”

  She didn’t get either answer. She got me looking down at my hands and not knowing how the hell to answer the question.

  So I took the bait. I made the plunge. I had nothing and no one to lose at this point. I threw out all my poker chips on one really crappy hand. I flushed my dignity down the toilet.

  “I was in love with you, Lizzie O’Malley,” I said it so quietly, I was unsure if she even heard me. I waited to see if my confession had changed anything. I waited for long seconds with my head down and my eyes captivated by a piece of lint on the plush carpet. Then it happened.

  I saw her legs jerk and I looked up to find her wide-eyed and obviously full of questions that I would never be able to answer. How does one pack nearly twelve years of thoughts, dreams, and some pretty raunchy sexual visions into one conversation? She searched my face as if she was looking for me to punk her or yell “just joshin’ ya!”

  “Why?” she choked out as she grabbed her chest. I watched the telltale blotching start to creep up her neck. She was uncomfortable, very aroused, or just plain embarrassed. I prayed that she wasn’t the latter.

  I threw my arms out to the side and baffled, I answered her with a question. “How could I not fall in love with you?”

  The enormous ball of regret took over my complete body. Oh and fuck me, it was heavy. My head hurt. I was a bonfire of regret. It had been so simple to say the words, to put myself out there, and yet I never did. I had wasted so much time waiting for her. I had spent so much time worrying about when Aoife was going to leave. I lived in my head of broken dreams and unattainable hopes.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Sean

  I had never seen Lizzie O’Malley look so shocked in all of her life. I wanted to laugh, loud and hard. She had to have been blind not to have known. God, we used to cuddle and I would get hard just lying with her in bed. Hello? What guy does that platonically? Did she think I was that much of a saint?

  “Do you still feel this way?” she quietly asked.

  “No.” It came out so fast that I didn’t even have time to register how it would sound. It sounded shitty.

  “Okay,” she drew out the word. “So you were in love with me but now you aren’t.”

  I nodded.

  She started waving her hand in a circle. “You have to give me more here because I am not following,” she coerced.

  I took a deep breath and moved next to her on the couch.

  “So I guess the first time I realized that I wanted you? That was right after Niall was born. Pretty much ever since then, I have been pining for you. Every time you needed me, I was there. You probably didn’t even notice, did you?” I looked at her and her hand was fisted in front of her mouth like she wouldn’t allow herself to say anything. I did notice that she was tearing up a little and I just continued.

  “Jesus, Lizzie. Every time I saw you, I thought that you would feel it when I stared at you a little too long or I hugged you a little too tightly. Rubbing your feet? Cuddling together? And it wasn’t just sexual. It was…it was everything about you. I fully believed we were made for one another.”

  “You did?” Lizzie squeaked out, a tear falling down her face.

  “Fuck yes. We are so friggin’ compatible. I wanted you. Then when Nick came along, I was absolutely no one to you. I stayed in bed for weeks. I slept around to get you out of my system. I still showed up to your dumb ass parties because, I suppose, I was waiting for your douche bag of a husband to break your heart.” I gave her an “isn’t that just fucked up” look.

  Her hand covered her mouth and her eyes went back to being wide and absolutely gorgeous. I couldn’t help it. I did laugh at her.

  “Stop looking so fucking shocked. You were everything to me, Lizzie...Fucking everything,” I nearly cried out after I calmed down. “Now that Nick is acting like douche bag, I don’t think it is my place to sweep in and coddle you. I am sorry but so fucking ecstatic to say that I don’t want to be there for you this time.” I blew out a breath and every affectionate feeling I had for Lizzie changed into a memory of time lost.

  Lizzie looked like I had stolen her puppy.

  She cleared her throat and tried to say something a few times while I continued to grin and shake my head at the relief I felt.

  “So when did it go away? Does it just go away?” She looked at me and then squeezed her eyebrows together in concentration. I saw the moment when she asked herself that question.

  She began to play with her nails and looked out the window. She looked lost. She looked unhappy. But shit, we were all unhappy. If you put your heart on the line, it is bound to get trampled on every once in a while. For her and me? We were royalty when it came to the painful loss of love.

  “You are wondering at what point you fell out of love with Teagan, aren’t you.” I assumed.

  She nodded and looked back at me quickly.

  I sighed and sat down next to her. I looked into her eyes and thought about all those times I wish I could have said something and didn’t. In my wildest dreams, I never would have conjured up the words that came out of my mouth. “I fell out of love with you when I knew I could love another person just as much.”

  I nodded my head at her, seeming to agree. Love replaced love. Didn’t it?

  “You fell so hard for Aoife that you don’t even have the desire to kiss me anymore?” she asked in mild amusement.

  “First of all, being in love with you – I wanted more than just a kiss,” I raised my eyebrows at her as I gave her a body once over. “But I know what you are saying and no, I don’t have those feelings towards you anymore. I obviously must feel something still, however, because I ran over here instead of going to karate with Aoife.”

  “Aoife,” Lizzie repeated quietly.

  “She isn’t happy that I came here,” I said as I threw my head back on the couch. “I think I fucked up.”

  “She wasn’t going to stay, Sean. She was never going to stay.”

  “I know that, Lizzie,” I countered – starting to feel a little annoyed.

  “So why? Why do you continue to fall every day and don’t tell me that you don’t. I know how it feels to spend another day and wonder how you could love a man even more.”

  “Why? She is here now. I can make love to her now. Right now, I want to be with her forever. I know what it feels like to walk around this world with an empty heart. It’s lonely. It is so fucking lonely. Right now, though – I am not lonely. I feel alive,” I said as I thrust my hands in a dramatic motion.

  We both sat silent for a few moments.

  “And who knows.” I felt my voice getting bigger. “Maybe she will change her mind and stay. Maybe she will go home and realize she needed me more than her fucking drunk father.”

  Lizzie shook her head adamantly. “No, she will not change her mind. That girl knows exactly what she is doing. She is here for the money. You were a bonus. Her life is in Ireland. You cannot compete with that – ever.”

  “That’s bullshit, Lizzie. People change for others all the fucking time!” I yelled at her. “Look at you. You were a thrift store junkie and now you are all diamonds and shit. People change. I can make this work. I will make it work.”

  Lizzie got up from the couch and she put her face right up to mine. “You listen to me and you fucking listen good because I know what I am talking about.”

  I couldn’t look her in the eyes. She was going to break me once again.

  “You can yell at me. Hell, scream at me. Tell me I'm wrong or beg me for a different outcome until you're bawling. But you, Sean…you were the one that told me that no matter what I did to make things go my way, I didn’t have the power to change the way another person lives their life." Her voice was strong, smooth, and chilling to the bone. I believed h
er and I fucking hated her for it.

  “Fuck you,” I spat at her.

  She drew back as if I had slapped her. “Excuse me?”

  “Fuck you, Lizzie. Not everyone has such the life that you have. Jesus, you are a fucking spoiled brat all crying about how your husband has to work for you and your two awesome kids while I want to squeeze out every single second with Aoife.”

  “Well, then – you get go fuck yourself, too,” she barked back at me. Her arms were crossed and she looked like she was about to tear into me.

  We stared at each other. I wanted to tear into her, too. She thought she was all self righteous because she had been “in my shoes”? What a bunch of bull shit. She wasn’t going to back down. I leaned my hip on the wall and crossed my arms.

  Lizzie crossed her arms and took a stance with her feet. She wasn’t a sad and scorned wife. She was a caged animal ready for blood.

  I wanted to laugh. It was all so clear to me. As if an eye doctor blew on new glasses, wiped the lenses with that solution, and then placed them on my face, I could see Lizzie in a crystal clear, pixilated light. I could have never made her happy. I didn’t even agree with most of the shit she did or said. We butted heads all the time but we laugh it off because we were good friends, the best of friends. Except, maybe not after tonight’s drag out fight.

  How hadn’t I seen this before? Stupid, stupid me. I was in love with the dream of Lizzie O’Malley – the one scene in the hospital room where I gave her everything she wanted and she looked at me like I was her hero. That wasn’t fucking reality. Shit, I worked all night long. She would have had my ass in a day job to appease her or we would both be standing off – just like we were now – almost every night. I could think on and on about how our daily lives would have been miserable but at this moment, I just saw her as a road block. She wasn’t being a friend to me. She was trying to school my emotions to make her life look better. I was done.

  “This was a super time, Lizzie. Thanks for the invite,” I stonily said as I pushed off the wall and passed her.

  “Yeah, thanks for fucking nothing,” she yelled after me. I wish there had been a door I could slam instead of waiting for the fucking elevator.