They share a look, and they both crack up.
I want to, but I don’t have it in me.
Which they both immediately notice. “Oh, Em,” Laney whispers. “I’m so sorry you’re dealing with this.”
“Every time I try to talk to him, I end up yelling at him and telling him to go away.”
They share another look.
I know that look.
That look saysholy shit, she’s lost her marbles. She doesn’t yell at anyone.
They still don’t know any details about what happened between me and Jonas in Fiji. When I told them I was pregnant, I told them I met someone on my solo honeymoon, we commiserated on our similar broken hearts, slept together, and went our separate ways.
I said I’d make sure he knew I was pregnant.
And the only thing I’ve done differently in our friendship since was decline the Razzle Dazzle film nights we used to have.
“He ran away,” I tell the still car, staring at the lid on my coffee cup. “Ultimately, he ran away. Didn’t tell me he was leaving. Just left. No warning. No goodbye. And it hurt. We’d become friends…I thought. I met him when I tripped over him passed out drunk on my porch. He was lost and thought he was at his villa, but he was at mine. It was right after the news of his divorce went public, but he’d actually been divorced for a while. Secretly. Until—until it wasn’t a secret anymore.”
“You were both in the middle of breakups,” Sabrina murmurs.
“We were. I told him to go away that first morning because it doesn’t take a lot of brain cells to know that when the world’s most viral runaway bride gets spotted with a newly-divorced Jonas Rutherford, the whispers and the rumors and the press get even worse. But Theo—freakingTheo—had put me basically on a private island. It was safe. Jonas showed me it was safe to leave my villa. He pulled me out of what was a pretty awful funk.”
“I can’t even imagine, and I had my own funks then,” Laney says.
I try to find a commiserating smile, and I can’t. So I sum up the rest instead. “We spent three days together. We snorkeled and hiked and went on boat rides and walked on the beach. We talked. And then we slept together, and it felt right and natural to take solace in this new friend that I had who wasalsoin no place for a relationship, but it was like—it was like the ultimate inI’m not alone, you know? But I woke up the next morning, and he’d left. Justpoof. Gone. And I had no way to reach him. I tried. I tried at least half a dozen times, and he never answered.”
“Did Theo know?” Laney asks. “Before we all saw that documentary on Jonas and realized Bash was basically his clone. Because I kinda want to punch Jonas myself now.”
I shake my head. “You would’ve known if he knew. He doesn’t keep secrets from you.”
They both wince, but I’m long since over all of the secrets Chandler kept from me when we were dating and engaged.
My life is so much better without him.
Until the end of Laney’s wedding, I would’ve said my life was perfect.
“Leaving Hawaii for Fiji was brutal.” I’ve never told them this part either. “I didn’t know half the world had seen video of the wedding until I realized everyone was staring at me and whispering. Someone asked for a selfie. Some random grandma told me I was better off without him, and someone else told me I was stupid to have even been that close to marrying him, and that they didn’t feel sorry for me. A lot of people implied variations on that last one, actually.”
“I need names,” Sabrina says.
I wave a hand. “It’s over. It’s done. They were strangers and they didn’t matter. I have Bash. I have you.I’m good. But I also havezerointention of putting myself in that spotlight ever again.But more? LikehellI’ll subject my son to that kind of attention. Zero. Fucking. Chance.”
Maybe I’m not over it.
Not if my heart is pounding this hard and fast and my mouth is tinny and dry and my stomach is rolling over on itself.
The idea of my baby boy being suffocated by camera lights and questions and judgment from strangers?
No.
No fucking way.
Laney rubs my shoulder. “So that’s what you tell him, Em.”
“We’ll come with you if you want us to,” Sabrina says. “Backup. That’s all.”
