Throwing Love #4 (Throwing Love #4) Page 5
“I'm sorry, I have to go.”
He turned to leave, and I literally felt my heart break in two. He wasn't listening to me at all. I knew what I was talking about, and yet he didn't care. He was ignoring everything I was saying, dismissing my experience all because his coach called. He was acting like he had no backbone at all. He was hurting me, breaking me in two, and he didn't care. At the end of the day, he was going to walk out on me and choose baseball over me. My blood pressure was going through the roof, and all I saw was red. I was in a fit of rage and without thinking I yelled out, “I'm sick of this, Bennett, and I'm not doing it anymore. You either choose me or you choose baseball, but you don't get to treat me this way and expect me to stick around. I'm done.”
He stopped with his back to me.
Chapter Eleven
Shell-shocked, I couldn't believe the words that had come out of my mouth. I never would have thought that I would give anyone that kind of ultimatum, but Bennett had pushed me too far. I wasn't just going to bow down like my father asked me to and I was done waiting like Connie wanted me to do. I was sick of being second to a game when I had given Bennett my all. I knew he could juggle both – he had been doing it just fine before he screwed up on his practices. But he wasn’t even willing to go back to that. I was just expected to live that way while he went off and went into the major leagues. What he didn't realize was that I wanted to be by his side as he made it there. Not pushed aside while he got there and then ended up with another girl. And that was inevitable. If he kept pushing me aside, I would leave, and when he made it to the big leagues, he would just meet someone new like I had never mattered. Well, I wasn't going to have it. He was either going to choose me and put our relationship first or he could lose me all together.
He turned around slowly and faced me. I couldn't really read his expression, but if I had to guess, it was somewhere between shock and anger. I knew that our conversation was about to get really ugly, but I wasn't sure what to do about it. I had said what I needed and it was now up to him to make a decision. If he made a bad one, there was nothing that I could do about it. I would not be chasing him for love any longer.
“I cannot believe what I'm hearing right now. Are you seriously asking me to give up my career? A career that you wanted me to have with your father in the first place? You aren't even making any sense right now, Emmi.”
“Don't tell me how I'm feeling. You have been pushing me away for weeks, and you just expect me to be here at your beck and call whenever you feel like picking up the phone to call. We don't have a relationship right now. I don't even know what to call what we have, but it's disgraceful. We had something great until you stopped going to your practices. All I'm asking is that we go back to the way things were. Stop pushing me away and invest in us.”
“I don't know what to say.”
“I want you to have a career in baseball, Bennett, but not at the expense of us, our relationship. Why would you want that? Why are you throwing us away over extra practices?”
“I'm trying to get to the major leagues, Emmi, in case you didn't know.”
“You can get there easily without killing yourself and us with these extra practices. Stand up for your talent. You're all star for a reason, for God’s sake.”
“What do you want from me? I'm doing the best I can right now.”
“Dammit, Bennett! I want you to fight for us. If you love me, it’s a pretty easy request.”
Bennett stood there like a deer caught in the headlights, speechless. I could see by the look in his eyes that he was weighing his options. The decision should have been easy, but he was acting like it was life or death. I couldn't even be sure if he wanted to choose me at all or if he was okay with letting me go.
“Stay with me, please, Bennett.”
His expression grew more frantic as his mind went in many different directions.
“I'm sorry...but I have to go.”
He turned from me then and walked out of my bedroom. I didn't bother to get up and follow him; there was nothing more that I could say to him. I had given him every reason in the world to stay and he had walked out on me. I wasn't sure what was going to happen, but I knew that one day he would regret it.
Throwing Love #5 comes out June 6th
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 Nella Tyler