72. Score to settle

COLE

I stood in the middle of the hall in my parents' house, my hand in my pocket, fingering the ring that I had been carrying since she abandoned it on the nightstand and left without a word. And with each stroke of my finger on that cool metal, I felt a profound sense of emptiness in my chest. Like someone took my heart in a cruel grip and wrenched it out of my chest without any care.

I knew it was a possibility, I knew this could happen but it still it hurt so much that the pain of it had brought me down to my knees on the morning that I woke up alone in the bed with her gone. And found the ring on the nightstand, abandoned. Forgotten.

It had been two weeks, four days and ten hours. And every moment had been like someone was stabbing me in the chest on the empty space where my heart should be. Now my plan which seemed great at the time I decided to go through to make her accept my terms, suddenly felt irrelevant. Stupid, even. Small even, in comparison to the ache that had taken r