Love Left Behind

6. Love Left Behind

BELLE

Evergreen, Maine,  the town’s sign had read. ~The most delightful place on Earth.~

Yeah, delightful my ass.

I was sitting on the bench on the side of the road, watching people as they walked past. My suitcase sat next to me on one side, and my backpack sat on the other.

Why the hell had I come here?

This was never my plan. In fact, I hadn’t planned to go anywhere, really. When I got on a Greyhound bus back in Minnesota, I had no idea where I was going to end up.

All I knew was I wanted to get as far away from Grayson and my old life as possible.

And I had done exactly that.

I’d sat on that bus for hours upon hours, watching as we passed through city after city—state after state. I’d switched buses whenever we got to a new station, always choosing to go north.

I’d gone as far north as I could without crossing into Canada until, finally, I’d ended up where I was now, in a small town in Maine, as far away from the bad memories as I could possibly be.

Evergreen was beautiful and quaint. It was also a tourist destination—a nice one geared toward rich families looking to spend their vacation on the coast.

Its main street, where all the shops and restaurants were located, looked out over the Atlantic Ocean.

And if you turned to face the opposite direction, there were mountains and a huge, fancy ski resort that I was sure was extremely busy during the winter.

The beaches were filled with tourists tanning and swimming, basking in the hot summer sun.

In the main part of town, the shops were all uniform, spanning either side of the streets, luring people in with their beautiful window displays and expensive items.

Streetlights lit the scenic cobblestone roads, and everyone seemed to know everybody else. I passed families and smiling faces everywhere I went.

At first, I considered myself lucky to have ended up here. This was the sort of town that I could really see myself settling down in, starting a whole new life where no one could find me.

I felt like Lorelai Gilmore, stepping into Stars Hollow for the first time, ready to break away from my toxic past.

But after spending nearly an entire day here, I quickly realized that Evergreen was nothing like Stars Hollow.

Sure, the town looked like it was straight out of a Hallmark movie, but the locals would’ve been better suited to participate in an episode of the Twilight Zone. 

The only way I could think to describe them was… strange.  It was like they somehow knew I wasn’t some other tourist they could suck money from. 

They stared at me as I passed as if I were some sort of zoo animal out on the loose in their picturesque town.

I kept hearing them whisper behind my back, and when I turned to look at them, they would look away quickly, acting like they hadn’t been watching and talking about me.

It felt like my every move was being watched as I walked down the street, and I didn’t know how to feel about it.

I knew I looked out of place.

I was wearing the same old, wrinkly clothes I had been wearing when I left Grayson, my hair could definitely have used a good brushing, and my face was still healing from Grayson breaking my cheekbone several weeks ago.

Okay, so out of place maybe wasn’t the best way to describe my current state... I was a hot mess. I might as well have had “Just escaped an abusive relationship”

written across my forehead.

Based on the looks I was getting from the locals, you would’ve assumed I had three heads or something.

My priority today had been getting a job. So far, however, that was not going too well. Every time I walked into a shop, restaurant, or business of any kind, the employees started acting weird around me.

Most evaded my questions, while others turned me away without even giving me a chance to speak. Some people even avoided me altogether as if they had seen me come in and assumed I had the plague.

It didn’t matter, though. They could stare all they wanted. I had decided that I was here now, and I was going to make the best of it. I deserved to settle down in a town as nice as this.

I deserved to have a good life, one where I didn’t think of Grayson every two seconds. And as much as I tried to make that happen, I was beginning to realize that that was easier said than done.

The harder I tried to push him and the memories of what he had done to me out of my head, the stronger they seemed to invade my mind.

It was almost as if I were incapable of thinking of anything other than my ex-mate, the man who ripped my heart out of my chest and tore it into a million pieces.

The pain was the worst part. My entire body ached.

My muscles felt like I had just run an entire marathon without any previous training and then kept on going even after finishing, pushing my body beyond its limit until I was on the verge of collapsing.

My feet dragged with every step I took, and my shoulders slumped from exhaustion.

Grayson’s mark on my neck burned like it had when he had first given it to me all those months ago, and I had locked myself away in a hotel room in order to stay away from him.

It seemed to have become infected, too, becoming red and blotchy.

I knew it was only going to get worse. I wasn’t sure how I knew this, but I could tell that it was our mate bond trying to push us together again.

It didn’t understand that Grayson was no longer my mate, that he had chosen to be with someone else over me.

And that he had made me fall in love with him, only to destroy me in the most painful way possible and throw my love back in my face.

But as bad as all that was, none of it was compared to the pounding inside my head.

Before this, I had never been one to get headaches.

Every once in a while, I would experience a dull ache when I was about to get my period, but it was never anything like this.

I had first felt it back on the bus leaving Minnesota; the pain had been sudden and piercing, making me double over due to its intensity.

It felt like a wild animal was thrashing around in my brain, tearing at the walls of my skull with its claws, trying to get free.

I had been tempted to stab something sharp into my head just to relieve the pressure. It had to be the worst migraine in the history of the world.

The pain in my head came in waves, never leaving but occasionally getting more intense, making my eyesight go blurry and the mark on my neck burn as if it were on fire.

The only thing to do was grit my teeth and try to get through it.

I couldn’t help but wonder if this was Grayson’s way of punishing me.

Because although he had mated with someone else, although I had felt the pain that had almost killed me, indicating he had officially given me up, I still felt this strange connection to him.

But here’s the thing: I had let him go. I had blocked him out of my mind and had done everything I could to ensure he was no longer connected.

So it wasn’t me that was keeping us bonded together. It was Grayson.

This made me furious. He didn’t want me. He’d made that perfectly clear. 

During the time I’d lived with him, he’d only spoken to me to tell me what an inconvenience I was or when he was trying to force me into having sex with him.

I was nothing more than a tool to him, a way for him to gain more power. He had never actually cared for me.

And, yet, he was trying to break into my mind. It reminded me of the feeling I felt when we were in Paris, and I had run away from him to see my mother. He had found me so quickly.

It had to have been because of this connection we shared between us. And when I had left him back in Minnesota, I made sure he couldn’t see into my mind as he had before.

I honestly didn’t think he would care. But I had this strange feeling that this overwhelming, horrible, intense headache I was experiencing was Grayson trying to keep tabs on me.

Was that what this was? He wanted to know where I was and what I was doing just in case he decided he did actually want me?

Yeah, well, fuck that. Under no circumstances was I going to let him back into my mind.

The worst part in all of this was... I loved him. He had made me love him. He had used false compliments and empty promises of a life with him that had seemed like something out of a fairy tale. 

It was that love that made me want to look past his flaws and the way he had treated me and... go running back to him. Yep, that’s right, despite all the horrible things he had done to me, I still wanted to be with him.

I kept wondering if I had made the right decision in leaving him, trying to convince myself that he hadn’t treated me that badly. 

That staying in that freezing cold room in the basement and being shunned by everyone around me, even my own soulmate, would be worth it if I got to be even a little bit closer to him.

I wanted to forgive him.

But I couldn’t— wouldn’t do that. Although it made me feel like I was going against my very nature, I knew I had to be done with him. 

I deserved better. When it came down to it, we both did. Grayson deserved better than staying with someone he didn’t actually like being around, who he only wanted so he could become more powerful.

And me—I deserved better than pining after a man who would never see me as anything more than a body to warm his bed.

He made me question my worth. He made me question if I was deserving of love.

And I hated that. I hated that he made me think of all the people in my life who I had pushed away, who had left me.

My mother had left me to go create a new family in a fantastic new country, far, far away from my father and me. She had never liked being my mom. She resented me for some reason.

My father had died of cancer, leaving me all on my own.

And even though I knew it wasn’t anyone’s fault, some part of me still wondered if I had just worked a little bit harder to buy him the medicine he needed...

If I had just spent a little bit more time with him in the hospital instead of hanging out with friends after school, would he still be alive today? Would I still have my dad?

Even Kyle and Elijah—two people who had come to mean a lot to me over the past few months—had left me in the end.

I had tried reminding myself that it wasn’t their fault. I knew they would have stayed with me if given the choice. But still, when it came down to it, they had chosen their alpha over me.

And, finally, there was Grayson. I wasn’t even good enough for my own soulmate.

God, if he couldn’t see past my flaws enough to love me, who would? 

As much as I tried to stop myself from thinking this way, tried convincing myself that all of those people left for their own reasons and that it had nothing to do with me, I just couldn’t.

It was hard not to dig through my memories and analyze every possible thing I could have done wrong.

It made me want to scream. And cry. The last few days had, admittedly, been one gigantic pity party.

Why hadn’t I been good enough? Why did everyone I cared about leave me? What did I do to make Grayson hate me so much?

I hated that Grayson had caused me to think this way.

He made me feel like all of my self-worth was dependent on what other people thought of me when, in reality, the only person’s love that I needed was my own.

I would be the one to see past my flaws.  I would be the one to love myself…even when memories of Grayson telling me I wasn’t good enough made it feel nearly impossible. 

So, yeah, he could pound on the inside of my skull as much as he wanted. I was never going to let him in. I was on my own now. And that’s the way I wanted it.