Chapter 14: Keeping up Appearances.
I stopped letting her words pull at my heart a little. I needed to find a way to turn it off. If I hurt her then she wouldn't want me anymore. If that's what it was going to take then that's what I was going to do. Play by her rules, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. If Abby Lockhart can do it then so can John Carter.
Okay Carter, so maybe this isn't one of your better ideas. You've come up with better ones. But I had to do something. She wasn't going to just give up and let me walk away. I had asked her to move on with her life and it looked like she had done just that, but it was only that way on the outside.
I spun around so that I was looking right at her. "Abby no it's over. What ever we had in Chicago was just that, in Chicago, this is the Congo. I have been living here for 18 months. Trying to do what I asked you to do move on with my life. I am not going to be going back to Chicago not now not ever, there's nothing left there for me anymore. Didn't you see that when I didn't come back, when I stayed away for so long? If I had any intentions of living, of being in Chicago, don't you think that I would have come back by now. My god Kerry has probably given my job away. I put my father in charge of the family foundation so that I wouldn't have to deal with it. Chicago is full of nothing but sad memories for me. That city has taken everything from me and here I have managed to get my life back in order and it doesn't include you Abby."
Oh god did I feel horrible spitting that out at here, but it had to be said, something inside of me told me that she wasn't going to give up unless I pushed her too far. And even though I still loved that woman with all my heart and soul it had to stop. I didn't want to hurt her but yet I found myself doing just that. Nothing was making sense anymore. I think that the pain of hearing that she had slept with Luka had gotten to me and I was extremely jealous of that fact. I probably should have just walked away right there and then before I said something that I regretted and lost her forever but I couldn't. I couldn't force my feet to move.
"There is something else that you should know Abby. I have found someone else." I spat at her knowing that it was nothing more than a lie. Well not a complete lie. I tried to rationalize what I had said to myself. I had slept with Kem, but that wasn't anything serious just you're run of the mill lost in the middle of nowhere fling. Or at least that was all it was to me. But I didn't have to make it sound like that to Abby. To her I could make it whatever I wanted it to be. Hurt her as badly as she had hurt me, was not that the little game that we were playing now. I turned back away from her hoping that what I had said had just sunk in. Maybe that is what was going on in the silence that was between us now.