I didn’t have the energy to question his chipper mood. Slicing through the box, my stomach dropped.
Why thefuckwas a cardboard Ansel Barlowe’s face staring back at me?
I found Ray standing several aisles over, cackling quietly to himself. He turned, “Thought it would be fun to have when he comes to the signing tonight.”
Shit.
Fuck.
Goddamn fuck.
I laughed awkwardly, placing a piece of paper over cardboard Barlowe’s face. “Am I closing by myself tonight?”
“Jazz will be here around 7 to help run the register for the event, but—” He shrugged, shelving books like he wasn’t setting my anxiety aflame with a flamethrower. “—mostly. We only had 25 RSVPs for the event tonight, and what with the talent being your beau, I figured we didn’t need more.”
I nodded, swallowing the knot that had formed in my throat.
Fuck.
CHAPTER 43
Two weeks.
That’s how long it had been since I had left her alone in the hotel room. Since I slammed the door. Since I told myself not to look back.
And did anyway.
Pillars of salt had nothing on me.
Since she didn’t stop me.
And every day since, I’d told myself not to reach out. That if she wanted me, she’d say something.
She hadn’t.
But neither had I.
I’d been a mess about it, if I was honest. My mom had called after I canceled dinner with her. I’d lied and said filming was running late. She didn’t buy it but didn’t press.
Kellogg had asked me if everything was fine before a press junket. I told him it was. He raised an eyebrow like he didn’t believe me for a second.
Hell, even my publicist noticed. “Ansel, you’re usually better at faking a smile,” she’d said with a too-bright grin.
I wasn’t in the mood to fake it anymore.
Not when every photo of us, every headline aboutus, felt like it was mocking me. I’d been stupid enough to think she’d meant it. That the touches and the kisses and the quiet mornings were real.
Maybe they had been. Maybe she just couldn’t admit it.
Either way, I couldn’t stop replaying her face — wide-eyed, guilty, small — when she’d said it was all fake.
God, I wanted to hate her for it. It’d be easier.
But I couldn’t.
Because in every photo, every memory, she still looked like the best thing that had ever happened to me. And there was an ache in my chest that was shaped just like her.
When my driver pulled up to Figments, my stomach knotted. I hadn’t let myself picture this moment, ran through a hundred different excuses in my head,beggingfor a reason to cancel.
