Cruel Fortune (Cruel 2)

I took a step inside and froze.

There she was.

Natalie.

A year had passed, and she looked exactly the same to me. Radiant. Effervescent. She was dressed in boho attire I’d seen her in for weeks on end. Though the dress was different, it felt right to me. Her hair was wavy, down her back, and she kept messing with it as she spoke to the excited woman standing in front of her. Her eyes lit up as they chatted back and forth, likely about the book and how much the woman clearly enjoyed it. Natalie tilted her head back and laughed. An unbridled laugh that brought me back to nights in the Hamptons with her. All those nights I’d taken for granted.

And she looked so…happy.

So very happy.

Suddenly, everything else left my head. Her book. What we’d had. Why I was doing this. All I saw was the woman who’d had a dream to become an author and succeeded. Damn it all if it was a book about us that had gotten her here.

If she saw me, then I would undo all of this. This whole life she had built. The life she had always wanted. I could only ruin it. Like I’d ruined our relationship.

Natalie had made it clear a year ago that she didn’t want any part in my world. That, if it were just us, then sure, this might work. Maybe. But I was a full package. I came with the expectations of the Upper East Side, which she had made perfectly clear that she did not want. She didn’t want my life. Fuck, I didn’t even want my life. So, there was no way I could drag her back into it.

Coming here was selfish.

Her happiness and success meant more to me than anything else I was going to say to her in that moment. If there had been something I could do or say a year ago to change it, I would have done it. But there wasn’t.

And there wasn’t anything now either.

So, I took a step back, walked through the door, down the stairs, and out of the bookstore.

And let her live her life without me in it.

Natalie

9

I glanced up from the book I was signing. My eyes drifted to the entrance to the room. To the place where I was certain a dark-haired man in a suit had been standing moments earlier.

“What is it?” the woman in front of me asked at my puzzled expression.

“I thought I saw someone at the door.”

She turned and looked with me. “No one’s there now.”

“I could have sworn…” I trailed off as my brain ran away with itself. I pushed the finished signed book back to the woman.

“Thanks for coming,” I told her. I glanced back to the bookseller at my side. “Sorry. I will be back in a minute.”

“Olivia,” the bookseller said softly, “there’s a line.”

“I know. I have to use the restroom. Just…give me a minute.”

Before she could say another word, I stood up and darted out of the room.

“Was there…someone standing here?” I asked the woman at the top of the stairs.

“Oh. Hmm…yes. A man just left.”

My feet took off before she even finished.

I wasn’t crazy.

He was here.

He was here.

He was here.

I ran down the stairs and through the bookstore, ignoring the puzzled looks of the customers and employees. Then, I was out on the sidewalk without a jacket in my sleeveless dress. But I hardly felt the cold.

I looked left and right. Desperate to catch a glimpse of the dark hair or a shock of baby-blue eyes. A man in a suit with his hands stuffed in his pockets. A look of contemplation on his face as he found me.

But there was no one.

It could have been anyone in that doorway.

I’d just hoped…

I thought I’d squashed all hope long ago.

Penn Kensington wasn’t going to come and sweep me off my feet. He’d tried a year ago, and I’d rebuffed him. Now, my brain kept envisioning him running down here to make everything right. A sick, twisted fantasy that would never come true. Because he could never make it all right. I didn’t even know if I really wanted him to.

But, until this moment, I hadn’t even known I’d wanted to see him.

And I couldn’t seem to fight away the disappointment that I did.

And he hadn’t shown up.

Natalie

10

“I still cannot believe that the publisher was able to get us tickets to Hamilton,” Amy said giddily as we stood outside of Richard Rodgers Theatre in Midtown.

“Pretty kick-ass perk if I do say so myself.”

“Tell me about it.”

We had our tickets scanned and then entered the theater. I was finally in the room where it happened. My inner nerd was squealing with delight. After the weird feeling I’d gotten at the bookstore earlier this afternoon, I needed this. Just me and Amy and Alexander Hamilton.