I am crying for the humiliation.
I am crying for the years I spent pining after a man who sees me as a piece of furniture.
I am crying because my car is broken, and I am broken, and I just want to go home.
She means nothing to me.
The memory of his voice is a physical pain, a shard of glass in my chest. It cuts deeper than Emily’s insults ever could.
Suddenly, headlights sweep across my back window, blindingly bright in the rear view mirror. A sleek black car creeps down the driveway. Emily’s car.
I shrink down in my seat, praying she doesn’t see me. Praying she drives past.
The car slows as it passes my stalled vehicle. Then, it stops. The window rolls down.
I shouldn’t look. I should stare straight ahead. But some masochistic part of me turns my head.
Emily is staring at me through the rain. Her perfect facade is cracked; her lipstick is smudged at the corner, and her eyes are red, wild with humiliation. She doesn’t look like a queenanymore. She looks like a woman who just lost everything and wants to make someone else pay for it.
“He doesn’t want you either, you know,” she calls out, her voice shrill over the sound of the storm.
I flinch, her words finding the exact crack Shane left in my heart.
“He’s just feeling guilty,” she sneers, leaning closer to the open window, heedless of the rain hitting her expensive blowout. “He’ll come running after you, play the hero. But once the drama fades? You’ll just be the charity case he feels stuck with.”
She laughs, a sharp, brittle sound. “Good luck with that broken car, Dove. It suits you.”
The window rolls up, cutting off my reply—not that I had one.
I watch her taillights fade into the storm, taking the last of my dignity with her.
Charity case.
The words echo in the small, damp cabin, louder than the rain. They shouldn’t hurt—they come from a woman lashing out in pain—but they hook into my insecurities and hold fast. Because they sound terrifyingly like the truth. Shane has always been the hero. I have always been the one needing saving. The one with the broken car, the small bank account, the drunk stranger harassing her. Is that all this is? Guilt? Obligation?
If he comes for me, will it be because he wants me, or because he feels responsible for his sisters’ friend. I can’t bear the thought of him looking at me with pity. I can’t be his burden. I need to leave before he can prove her right.
I take a ragged breath, inhaling the smell of dust and rain. I wipe my face with the back of my hand, smearing the makeup further. I won’t let them see me like this. I won’t let Shane look out the window and see the pathetic girl crying in her broken car.
So I sit up.
“One more time,” I whisper. “Work. Please.”
I turn the key. The engine coughs, sputters violently—and then roars to life. Relief washes over me, so intense it makes me dizzy. The car vibrates around me, a rough, uneven idle, but it’s running. I jam the gearshift into drive, desperate to put miles between me and the humiliation waiting back at the house.
Needing to turn around, I drive back up the driveway to the Archer’s house, with the intention of completing a three point turn. But as I venture closer, I slam on the brakes, because a figure is sprinting down the driveway, cutting through the rain like a dark blur.
Shane.
My heart drops into my stomach. He is running flat out, his expensive suit soaked instantly by the downpour. Mud splatters up his tailored trousers. His hair is plastered to his forehead, wild and unkempt. He’s holding something white against his face—a napkin? It’s stained red.
“Go,” I tell myself. “Drive around him.” But I can’t move. My foot is frozen on the brake.
He reaches the car in seconds. He doesn’t go to the passenger side. He throws himself at my window, his palms slamming against the glass.
“Dove!” he shouts. His voice is muffled by the rain and the glass, but the desperation in it vibrates through the door frame. “Dove, stop!”
Water streams down his face, dripping from his jaw, mingling with the mud on his collar and the blood smudged on his upper lip. He looks wrecked. He looks terrifyingly beautiful.
