I straighten, grabbing a glass of water as I pass the kitchen, collapsing on the sofa and staring at the television screen—it’s dormant, the pixels resting. I can make out my vague reflection, the pale suit I wear today showing like a smudge, my blonde hair like gold.
Eleven days since Jagger walked out of my hotel room and I slumped to the floor, the reality of my situation abundantly clear.
I did love him.
I loved him in a way that was shredding my soul to bits, that was burning me inside, that was making me feel like I couldn’t stand up straight.
This is so different to when things fell apart with Gareth. If there’s one thing to be grateful for in this mess, it’s the realisation that what I shared with Gareth wasn’t love. Not the kind of love that reaches inside of you and rearranges who you are. Not the kind of love that breathes fire into your cells and freedom into your bones.
Is that what I had with Jagger?
I close my eyes, blocking out my doppelgänger, my apartment, my life, my now.
I did.
It was.
It really was.
His failure to understand that doesn’t change what we felt. His inability to love me doesn’t make the love I felt any less real, any less potent.
It’s love.
I love him.
I love him, but that’s not enough.
He doesn’t love me—not in the same way I do him. Because on no planet, at no time and in no way would I have ever been able to walk away from him like he did me.
I would never have been able to turn my back on him, to see his face crumple, to hear his proclamation of love and act as though it changes nothing.
I would never have compared him and me to me and Gareth. The idea that he told Lorena he loved her, that he said to her what he might have said to me, that he felt for her what I wanted him to feel for me?
Repugnant.
He didn’t love me. He doesn’t love me.
I don’t doubt he’s been with another woman since me. Someone else has worshipped at the altar of Zeus, has lost her mind to his prowess and power. It’s been eleven days, and he’s Jagger Hart after all.
Nausea surfs my insides. I ignore it, rolling onto my side and squeezing my eyes closed. And, just like every night since I got back to Sydney, I sleep like the dead.
I sleep until dawn and then I go into the office despite it being Sunday and I focus on work, on my future—on a future that is just about me—and I force myself not to think about Jagger.
Not to think of him, not to wonder about him—to remember that he walked away from me just like Gareth did.
I force myself not to think about the fact I looked my nightmare in the face—and lost.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
‘YOU SAID IT’S GOOD?’
I blink, focusing on Theo, bringing myself back to the present. ‘Yeah.’
‘More than you expected?’ He’s staring at the golf course, the aerial shot showcasing it at dawn, the pale oranges and purples streaking across the sky.
‘The property has a shitload of potential,’ I say, my eyes shifting over the course, remembering Grace, the way her body backed into mine as I showed her how to swing the golf club.
But no memory of Grace is complete without the final one—the look of utter devastation on her face. Of destruction. Of brokenness. No memory of her can be enjoyed for its warmth and completeness when that hard edge of pain and hurt is right there, waiting to be remembered, to remind me what I did to her.