Tayla's house isn't big, and although we've only been apart a few days, the distance feels enormous when I walk into her house and find her sorting through her personal things. Boxes are marked in bold letters with storage or Mom's, and they litter the small living room. Guess she's really moving to Scotland. I shove my hands deeper into the pockets of my jeans and try to ignore the crushing heaviness in my chest. Man, did I ever fuck up.

Tayla clears the couch of clothes and gestures for me to sit down. Unlike before, she doesn't sit beside me. She takes the stiff-backed chair to the left of the couch. When I glance toward her bedroom, I can't decide whether I should laugh or cry. The door is closed, and the Soulmate Simon plate hangs in the center. She might as well have a giant picture of me on a dartboard. Though I suppose the ugly, flaccid penis amuses her more than a photo of me. Either way, her do not enter is clear.

From my back pocket, I take out the printouts of the emails I exchanged with GameSetMatch and the women, and I pass her the sheaf of papers.

"This is all of it?" she asks, scanning each page before flipping to the next one. A crease forms between her brows.

"Yes," I say, my gaze straying to the plate again. Two weeks ago, that plate was funny. I was so sure I could win her back, and the plate would become a joke between us, something we both laughed at eventually. Instead it's functioned as an omen, a reminder of what a shit I can be, a warning for her to keep me in check. I'm not the soulmate the top of the plate decries, but the ugly dick depicted beneath it. I release an unsteady sigh.

When our gazes connect, her honey brown eyes glint with steel and then she follows where my focus has been. A hint of a smile tips up the edges of her lips. "Felt like a good place to hang it. I put a lot of work into that plate."

"All the others seem to serve their function in a dark cupboard." Why am I pushing the issue? It's not like I don't know why she put it there.

"Not true." She tries to lean back in her chair and is stopped short by the high, stiff back. "The Happy Birthday plate comes out every year. This one," she gestures towards the dickhead on the door, "can serve a purpose every day."

Instead of continuing the conversation that'll probably go in circles and make me feel even worse, I opt for a subject change. "What's your plan with GameSetMatch? Did you book an appointment with them or something?"

"They won't see me," she says, her jaw tightening. "I've violated their contract by lying about whether or not you and I made contact."

"You've gotta be fucking kidding me." I run a hand through my hair. "Have you got the contract? Did Ruby or Dean look through it?"

"Neither of them is a lawyer," Tayla says opening her phone and passing it to me.

"I'm not either, but it seems ridiculous they can take so much money from you and just dismiss you." While I read through the contract, she pours over the emails I was sent with a highlighter.

We read in silence for a few minutes. Words like libel and slander are mentioned several times throughout the contract. Have they sued people into silence before? Can we go after them through social media without incurring their litigation arm? Maybe I can get Aaron's lawyer to look through this. She does corporate law for the dealership and might be able to decipher some of this legalese.

When I glance up, Tayla is holding a single piece of paper in her fingers, the others back on the coffee table. "I can't believe they sent this to you," she says, her face pale.

My stomach clenches. "Which one is that?" I close her phone and lean forward, though by the expression on her face, I realize which email she's clutching. There's only one in the pile that could elicit that reaction. It's the letter I received in the bathroom the night I didn't propose. When I printed the emails from Aaron's car dealership, a spike of anger shot through me at GameSetMatch's audacity. Of course, anger hadn't been the most prominent emotion that night. Resignation, a cloud of inevitability. 

Her hand shakes, and she sets down the paper. The date is highlighted, and some of the words at the top of the email are also highlighted. There's less color as the letter progresses. "They didn't know me. How could they write this diatribe about how staying with me would ruin my life?"

I slouch deeper into her couch. "They'd tried everything else at that point to get me to give Jada a shot. At every turn I refused. For six months after we broke up, I still refused. Then, they called me and said if I gave Jada at least three dates, they'd stop hassling me." I pick up one of Tayla's highlighters and flip it around my fingers.  "After the three dates they stopped, but she didn't."

"You got this the night you broke up with me."

"In the bathroom. Then my father called me sobbing."

"Is this why you broke up with me?" There are tears in her eyes.

I search her face and wish I still had the right to comfort her in some way. "What do you remember about that night?"

She frowns, and a tear slips down her cheek. She scoops it up and shakes her head. "Private room, flowers, nice meal, the server brought champagne at exactly the wrong moment."

"Do you remember what I said when I came out of the bathroom?" My idiotic words are burned into my brain. The whole night has been buried so deep in my subconscious that no one has ever had every detail. I couldn't bear to take them out and examine them. Maybe if I'd gone to the server first and nixed the champagne we'd have talked, sorted out my confused feelings, but I came out of the bathroom shellshocked by the letter, by my father's pleading voice.

"I think we should break up." Her voice is firm.

I can't meet her gaze because reliving my biggest moment of stupidity makes my chest feel like it's being squeezed in a vice. "I said, 'I'm not sure I can do this right now' and you said, 'You're breaking up with me?', and instead of denying it, I just sat there like a fucking moron."

"No," she says, her voice firm again. "I'd remember if you didn't say you wanted to break up with me." But her voice trails off at the end, as though new pieces to a puzzle that never fit are slotting into place. She cocks her head and stares at me, a series of half-formed thoughts floating across her face.

There's no defense for how I behaved, and I'm not going to open my mouth and lay any blame on her. But the way she remembers that night isn't quite accurate. Was the result the same? Yeah. So, I've never denied that I broke up with her. My vague language and then my silence got us here.

"So you didn't mean to break up with me?" Her voice is full of disbelief, hurt, a touch of anger. "Why didn't you take any of my calls the week after we broke up if you didn't want to break up?"

"I don't know what I meant when I went out there, what I wanted. I had to throw on the brakes because I was so brutally mixed up. My head was cotton balls and nonsense." I drag my hands along my cheeks, my fingertips scratching through the thin layer of stubble. 

I couldn't ask her to marry me with my mind so out of sorts, but then when she suggested we break up, as though it was my idea, I couldn't respond. How does someone get to a proposal and not follow through without becoming a giant dick? I couldn't contradict her assumption because I didn't know what to say. Uh, I think I want to marry you, but all these other people are telling me I don't. Stupid. Unforgiveable. I couldn't say that, so I said nothing. 

"In one ear, GameSetMatch is telling me the love I feel for you can't be real, can't be something built to last, and we're destined for divorce. Marrying you would be sentencing you to a life of unhappiness. You read it," I say, tossing my hand toward the paper. "In the other ear, I've got my father nattering on about how men aren't meant to marry. I might be happy now but give the relationship another ten or twenty years, and I'd be as miserable as him." I throw out my hands. "At twenty-six, I was no mental or emotional match for that tornado. I couldn't seem to find the right perspective. Who was right? Me, who loved you so fucking much? Or them who told me that love would fade?"

I hesitate for a second, unsure how much I should reveal. But I've come this far, I might as well give her the whole avalanche. "Then my friend Drayton, who'd been with his wife since we were in high school, called to tell me he was having an affair and leaving Sylvia. He'd gotten this marriage and happily ever after thing all wrong, and he was asking for a divorce. That was like the day after I didn't propose."

"They were miserable, Simon. We saw how terrible they were together when we had dinner with them that night."

"Sure, yeah. But they weren't like that at all in high school or any of the times I hung out with them before the night we had our double date." I run a frustrated hand through my hair. "And my parents—who we both thought had a great relationship—were on the verge of divorce." I take a deep breath and release it. I fiddle with her phone before setting it on the coffee table. 

She's been stunned into silence, and I wonder what she's thinking. Probably calling me three million terrible names. "We couldn't even pick out a house together. Couldn't agree on a layout, and I think that freaked me out too. Stupid now. What the fuck do I care about a house? I don't. I don't care. I don't know why it was even a thing. But on top of everything else, it just felt like maybe we should be slowing down, except I let us go too far."

"You should have talked to me," Tayla whispers.

"I couldn't talk to you until I knew my head was in the right place. Took a long time to get there. Then once I was there, standing in front of you asking for a second chance, my timing was awful."

"The worst," she agrees, the edge of the paper crumpling under her fingers. "Jesus, Simon."

The heat from embarrassment and shame starts in my neck and creeps up into my cheeks. "I am—" My voice cracks, and I clear my throat, shifting uncomfortably in the couch. "I've always been deeply ashamed of how I behaved that night. So when I—when I thought I could skirt around the whole truth." I meet her gaze before skating away. "I took the easy way out."

"Again," Tayla says, and her voice is thick. "You took the easy way out again. You should have talked to me after that night, Simon. You should have come to me, even if you were a mess, you should have come. Because—" Tears overwhelm her voice, thickening it. "Because I loved you enough to help you, to forgive you. I could have forgiven you."

I meet her gaze, and my heart stutters at the tears in her eyes. Here I am, making her cry again. I'm the worst. "It sure as shit didn't feel like the easy way out back then, Tay. I get what you're saying. I get it. But I felt like I was walking through mud every day. Asking someone to wade through that shit with you when you're not sure how it's going to end? Didn't feel like the right thing at the time."

"That's what a relationship is, Simon. It's holding someone's hand while they walk through their darkest days, tackle their hardest things. Instead, you and I were wandering through these really hard years alone." She sniffs and stands up, running her hands down her shorts. "I need a drink. Do you want a drink? Or a piece of chocolate cake? I think I need cake."

Alcohol and cake. Our conversation must be stressing her out. "No, I'm—I'm good. Maybe I should go? I can contact Aaron's lawyer about this contract if you send me a copy."

She's already in the kitchen when I gather my things to leave, she comes out and points a finger at me. "Don't you dare leave. We're not done sorting this out. Am I rattled? Yeah, but we've got work to do. Okay? Sit down."

I nod and sink into the couch. The pile of emails are on the coffee table in front of me, and Tayla is knocking around in the kitchen. Telling the whole truth, every last word, should be a weight off my shoulders, instead, a bit of unease swirls in my stomach. Should I have been that honest?

She comes out of the kitchen with a coffee cup and a giant slab of cake.

"It's that bad?" Though she doesn't seem to have alcohol, so maybe not that bad.

"I'll let you know at the end of my sugar rush." She heads for the uncomfortable chair again rather than the more logical spot at the couch where the coffee table is close.

It's silly for her to try to balance her cake on her lap. "Let's switch spots." I move toward her chair.

We shuffle around, our chest skimming each other, and when I glance down, she catches my gaze, and the shuffling stops. Her hands are full of coffee and cake, and yet we can't tear our focus from each other.

"You must hate me," I mutter.

The tension in her face dissipates. "I hate what you did Simon—both times—but that doesn't mean I hate you."

A piece of her hair falls forward, and my touch is tentative, light as a feather when I smooth the strands behind her ear. God, I love her. She closes her eyes and sighs.

"I don't hate you, Simon. It would probably be easier if I did." Her voice is soft, and her gaze, when she opens her eyes, is softer, and all I want to do is sweep her into my arms and kiss her.

SCARRED CROWN is now complete.

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