But I'm not watching the bidders.
I'm watching Sierra.
She's in the back corner, camera raised, documenting everything like she promised. Professional. Controlled. Not looking at me.
The bidding hits three thousand.
I catch her eyes—red-rimmed and devastated.
Thirty-two hundred.
She bites her trembling lip fighting back tears.
Thirty-five.
“Going once at thirty-five hundred...”
A shudder rolls through her and she lowers her camera.
“Going twice...”
She turns toward the door.
“Sold! To the lady in red!”
Sierra slips out.
Gone.
Something cold floods my chest.
No.
I don't hear the rest. Don't register the winner. Don't care about the check being written or the hands trying to shake mine.
I need to find her.
Jumping off the stage, I’m already moving toward the exit, when I spot him.
Justin. Holding hands with a guy.
Fuck.
He wasn't flirting with her. He wasn't trying to win her back. He was just... talking. Saying hi. Being polite.
Exactly like she said.
And I?—
Typical fucking guy.
I saw what I was afraid of seeing. I made her the villain in a story she wasn't even part of. And then I took the most vulnerable thing she ever shared with me—Eleanor and Jedediah, the initials, the split log, all of it—and I beat her withit.
I used our story as a weapon.
What the fuck did I do?
I push through the crowd, desperate now, needing to find her, needing to explain?—
