“I don’t want to hurt you any more than I have,” I say, gripping his hand. “I don’t want to keep telling you things that you’ll hate me for.”
“And if he refuses you?”
“He is, and he will continue to, and I’ll have to live with it, but I won’t ever put anyone else in your position again. Hurting you was my rock bottom and the end of my denial.”
“And he’s a good man?”
“He’s a very complicated man, that’s for sure. But he also happens to be a man I can’t stop wanting no matter how complicated he is.”
“So, you’re really ending this for a man you may never have?”
I stand and run my hand through his hair before cupping his jaw. “I hope you’ll believe our breakup is for more than me. I broke our engagement because you deserve a woman who can forget her past and be solely yours, and I truly want you to be happy.”
“And what about your happiness?”
“I don’t know, Collin. I guess…” I repeat Tobias’s words. “I don’t get a happy ending. I just get an ending.”
Collin slips on his jacket, destroyed after hours of sorting our lives out, after more tears and arguing and one last attempt by him to take me home. And as I follow him out to his car, I acknowledge that my life back home is truly over. After a painful negotiation, he’s moving me out of our home and putting my things in storage. Once I leave Triple Falls, I’m moving forward, not going back. There’ll be nothing to go back to. The life, the lie I lived for years, is over. He pulls away with my ring in his pocket, and I stand staring after him for long minutes, mourning the loss of him, stuck in the truth.
It’s been a week, another lonely week of driving through hills and valleys, of talking to Dominic where he rests, of sorting through memories. I drive by the garage daily but never stop. With the transition nearly complete, especially with Tobias’s surprising cooperation, I know my time is almost up. Maybe it’s closure I sought out, but after all that’s happened, knowing the truth of the lengths he went to, the truth of his feelings for me then and now, I’m hard-pressed to just up and leave, to fully let it go. But he’s made his decision, and he continually makes it every day keeping me at arm’s length.
But my foolish heart refuses to forget how torn he was the night he drove me home. The words he spoke, the way he touched me, he wanted to touch me. He said things to me I could only dream of hearing.
He still loves me, but he refuses to let himself.
Guilt. Guilt separates us, but it was our mistakes that made us.
But he still wants me, despite our mistakes, despite our history.
Even with the gorgeous woman that waits in his bed.
But he is with her.
And he’s with her now as he walks through the door of the restaurant. Stunned by their sudden appearance, I sink in my seat, lifting my book higher, my gaze just over the edge as my waitress approaches with another glass of wine.
I send up a silent prayer, hoping the hostess seats them as far away from me as possible. But I can’t look away as Alicia smiles at him over her shoulder as he slips off her jacket.
It’s hell on Earth watching them function like a couple. I lift my glass, gulping down half the contents to fight the raging jealousy stirring within me.
Though we had played house for nearly a month, we never had the luxury of being in public. Once we let our hostility go and embraced the other, they had been the most fulfilling weeks of my life. But his choice is clear tonight as he wines and dines her, and my appetite disappears.
I thank my waitress when my pasta is set in front of me and curse my fucking luck as they’re seated in a booth adjacent from me.
Tobias is facing away, but Alicia can get a clear view of me where I sit at a two-seater, alone, next to the window facing the street. I flip a page in the book I’m no longer reading and lift my fork, the food flavorless as I force myself to chew and swallow. Alicia beams at Tobias from where she sits while rocks form in my throat.
Fuck this.
Lifting my hand to summon my waitress for a box, I knock my wine over. It spills to the carpet, and I’m thankful for the lack of sound, but it’s too late. Alicia’s eyes find me as I shuffle to stand, pulling my napkin from my lap to blot the carpet. Except it’s not my napkin, it’s the tablecloth I mistake it for, and now my dinner has joined my wine. It’s from the floor that I see a flash of flame as the candle on my table tips before it sets the cloth on fire.
I hear the terrified cry of a woman to my left as I lift my water glass to douse the flames. Thankfully it goes out, but not before setting my book alight. Before I can lift the linen to snuff it out, I’m pushed out of the way, and it’s done for me. Spiced citrus wafts through the air as I curse fate. Curse my inability to make a silent and smooth exit.
I can’t look at him. I refuse to.
“Thank you.”
His dark chuckle rumbles, lifting the air between us with the sweet sound. “You’re far less smooth than you were at eleven.”
“That’s clear.”