She paced the front of the room and pointed to the screen, her cheeks bright. But that was the only sign something was off. That she was upset. The rest of her looked professional, put together, and beautiful.
What had I done?
It was a special form of hell waiting for her to finish. I tried to read the faces of everyone in the room, seeing if they liked it or not. There were half smiles from most, but it was my mom who wore a huge grin. Relief eased some of my tension, but I would never forgive myself if Nora fucked this up because of my mistake.
I bounced my leg on the floor as I waited and waited. It took twenty minutes before they started standing up, and I wiped my sweaty palms on my pants, ready to walk in. My mom raved about how impressed she was and squeezed my arm as she left. That was a good sign? Probably. Frank and Angelica stood around talking, but once they saw me, they bowed out with a quiet good-bye.
“Nora,” I said, my voice breaking on the second syllable. I cleared my throat and rocked back on my heels. She hadn’t looked at me yet.
“You let me believe you were someone different this entire time,” she said, an icy tone I hadn’t heard before. She unplugged the laptop and met my gaze, zero warmth in her brown eyes. Disgust. Hurt. Anger. “You’re Anthony Carter. NotFritz Anthony.God, I’m such an idiot.”
“Hey, no. There’s an explanation for this, I swear. I was going to tell you tonight, after the presentation. I didn’t want to upset you or distract you from this,” I said, pleading with her. She only had a stack of papers left to clean up, and I had a feeling she wasn’t going to wait around to hear me talk.
“Worked out well, didn’t it? Seconds before it started, bam, I find out you’re an asshole.”
There was a countdown, a time limit, before the bomb went off ending whatever we had. I could hear the ticking. “Please, I just…I want to explain.”
“Explain. Tell me why you let me believe you were someone else. A chauffeur for Christ’s sake.” She put her hands on her hips. “Tell me in the simplest terms you can, why you lied to me for weeks while we were…together.” Her voice cracked, and I stepped toward her. She held up a hand. “No, donottouch me. I don’t even know you.”
“That’s not true. I’m the same person, just with a different name. Only my mom calls me Anthony—everyone else uses Fritz. You do know me, Nora, more than anyone.” This was bad. Really bad. The ice in her eyes seemed to double, and I ran a hand over my chest, hysteria latching onto me.What if she won’t forgive me?
“I feelhumiliated.Your mom told me togo easy on you.So not only did you fuck me, you told others about the lie?”
“Wait, no. I mean yes, but not like you’re thinking.”
“Then tell me what I’m thinking. Please.” She cleaned everything up and had her stuff in a bag. She crossed her arms and glared at me with nothing but hurt shining through. I had to bare it all if I even had a shot at fixing this.
And it looked like now was the moment.
“Someone pretended to be in love with me for a year. She lied and conned me because she wanted my bank account. She blackmailed my sister for thousands of dollars and—”
“So you’re telling me you went through this…and decided to do the same thing to me?”
“No, wait! No! That’s not…Nora, you started talking about marriage that first day I picked you up, and you stared right through me like I was the help!” Great, I was yelling now. Really helping my case.
“Instead of telling me, then and there, you let the lie start. It’s been weeks, Frit—Anthony—whatever. You should’ve told me before we got involved.” Her cheeks reddened, and her eyes filled with tears.
“I’m so fucking sorry.”
“Yeah, I am too. I thought this…well, it doesn’t matter what I thought we were.” She sniffed, and tears fell down her face.
She might as well have stabbed me in the chest with how much it hurt to see her cry. “It matters to me, Nora. Iloveyou. I want to fix this. I’ll do anything. I need…you’ve become a part of me. I can’t—” My own voice broke, and I pinched the bridge of my nose, desperate and not giving a shit that people watched us from the hallway.
“If you love someone, truly, you don’t lie to them.” She jutted her nose into the air and gripped the handle of her bag tight. “This isn’t fixable. Good-bye.”
She walked out of the conference room and instead of going right, and farther into the office, she went left and walked out the door. I couldn’t move. The words “this isn’t fixable”cemented themselves into my chest, slicing my heart into pieces one at a time.
If I learned anything about Nora, it was that she meant what she said. If she really thought this wasn’t fixable, then we were done. Over. No more camping trips or plant talk, or volunteering, or sharing our dreams. The woman to show me lovewaspossible had walked out of my life for good, and it was my own damn fault.
Chapter Thirty
She hadn’t returnedone call or text, hadn’t answered her door, and now that I thought about it, I wasn’t sure she even came back to the apartment. I listened for any sign she was there—a clinking of keys, a door opening, the main lobby door squeaking, but two days later, it’d been dead quiet. It was safe to assume she wasn’t coming back to the apartment, and that killed the little flicker of hope I’d had. If I could get more time with her to explain, I could fix this thing. Two days without knowing she was okay. Two days of my mom and sister telling me I deserved this.
Two days of regret turning into heartbreak—something I wasn’t sure I’d survive a second time. I took a long swig of beer at my counter and made up my mind. Ihadto make sure she was okay. The growing unease in my gut was to the point I couldn’t go thirty seconds without worrying. She had nowhere else to go. Did she stay at a hotel? Take a rideshare two hours north? I grabbed the extra set of keys on the counter and marched across the foyer. I knocked, waited, and opened the door. “Nora? You in there? I just need to know you’re okay.”
No answer.
I’d been in this unit countless times since buying the building the year before, but there was never such an empty feeling like hers had now. Her plants were all here—except the clover and the Edelweiss. My heart skipped a beat that maybe she’d taken them with her. If she did, that meant they had value to her, that I mattered.
