“I was wrong,” I whisper. I reach for his hand. “I don’t want you to propose, Thomas. We don’t belong together.”
“What?” Thomas asks, his mouth wide in dismay. “I’m willing to do everything you said you wanted.”
It would be easier to make him think that this was his fault, and I guess in some ways it is—if he’d just proposed when he was supposed to, so much of this wouldn’t have happened and I’d be in the throes of wedding planning right now. But that’s also dishonest. I’m not ending this because of what he did—I just happened to discover some things about myself when he did it.
“A few weeks ago, I just put the breakup down to cold feet, you know? But actually...I think it’snowthat you’ve got cold feet, Thomas. You wanted to be on your own and your first stab at it sucked, and so you’re back to me as if it was a mistake. But all the things you sensed that we lacked...we still lack. I didn’t get it when you ended things, but I do now.”
His lips press tight. “Bullshit. This isn’t about what we lacked. This is about him.”
I shake my head. “It is, and it also isn’t. I’m not with Elijah. Everything you saw on Instagram? That was fake, just to make you jealous.”
“You’re shitting me,” he groans. “I left the yacht early.”
Resentment flares inside me, but I quell it. “You left the yacht because you were lonely, remember? It’s hard being single again, and it’ll be hard for me too. But I’ve learned something, watching Kelsey these past few days. When it looked like her wedding was going to be ruined, she didn’t care. She just wants to be married to Hawk, and he doesn’t care because he just wants to be married to her. It wouldn’t be like that with us.”
He blinks at me in shock. “I’m not sure what you’re saying. Just because I might care about how the wedding turns out doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t care about marryingyou. The two things aren’t mutually exclusive.”
“Maybe not,” I concede. “But I want you to try to imagine, just for a moment, that you’re marrying someone you love somuch that everything else is irrelevant. We aren’t there. I think you’d be a good husband. You think I’d be a good wife. But marriage is long, and rumored to be kind of tough, and don’t we deserve to at least start off with a little of the magic Kelsey and Hawk have now?”
He frowns. “Some of that just comes with time. You begin a life with someone, and you have children with them, and that kind of devotion grows.”
He’s talking about it as if we were entering an arranged marriage, and in some ways, we would have been.
Arranged for him because he wanted a wife, and he preferred that she be television-friendly and smart. Arranged for me because I wanted someone who’d be a good dad, and who’d understand that my career mattered to me, but who wouldn’t have the power to hurt me the way Elijah did. And some arranged marriages work out well, but I’m no longer willing to settle for that. I want what Kelsey and Hawk have, what Elijah and I could have had, or nothing at all.
“Thomas, go find someone you want to marry so badly that if it’s pouring rain on your wedding day, you barely notice. I want that for you, and I want it for myself, and I’m so sorry that you came all this way for nothing.”
I press my lips to his forehead, grab my shoes, and turn toward the house. It’s a relief that he doesn’t follow.
Today has been exhausting and heartbreaking and long. I was still grappling with the loss of anything romantic with Elijah, but now I’ve lost our burgeoning friendship too. The future looks like an abyss without it. My research might be safe—I don’t think Thomas will mess it up again, and I’ve got the funding confirmed in writing—but that won’t stop everyone at school from treating me like a leper...and then what? I move to a new lab, I guess—one where I know no one. I start from scratch again.
My eyes are squeezed shut as I try to ward off tears. I don’t see the ground beneath me, so when something sharp stabs my heel, I yelp. I lift the sole of my foot to check as a car approaches, illuminating me in all my present glory.
Blood drips down the front of my dress from the cut. That’s when I just give up.
Tears are sliding down my face whether I want them to or not. It’s simple self-pity, but fuck it. I deserve a little self-pity after the night I’ve had.
“Easton?”
I turn. Elijah is in his car, staring at me.
This is so fucking embarrassing. To be caught crying after the way he treated me, to have to admit that he was right...I just can’t do it. “I stepped on something,” I say, swiping tears away with the base of my hand. “Go away.”
He doesn’t. He puts on his hazards and leaves his car in the street while he climbs out and crosses to where I stand.
He falls to his knees on the sidewalk and grasps my ankle to look at the sole for himself.
“I’ve got it, Elijah. I’m the one of us who’s a doctor, remember?”
His smile is kind...and weirdly hopeful. “I’d almost forgotten. You’re so modest about that.”
I’m not sure what the hell happened to the guy who was taunting me about what I let him do in the bathroom an hour ago. He seems to have forgotten, but I have not.
He rises, scooping me up in his arms, and carries me to a retaining wall just a few feet away. “Stop,” I hiss. “You don’t get to do this big brother shit as if you didn’t just use me an hour ago and?—”
“I’m sorry.” He grasps my face in his hands, forcing me to look at him. “I’m so fucking sorry. I was jealous and selfish and furious, and I just went to Thomas’s hotel, trying to find you soI could at least apologize, but hopefully more than that, and...” He stops, looking around him. “Speaking of which, why are you alone, and crying?”
“My foot’s bleeding, dummy,” I say, crying harder than I was before.
