I tore my gaze away, pressing my lips together as the city blurred past outside.How could he do this to me?
The question looped over and over in my mind, with no answer that made sense. Somehow, the worst part wasn’t eventhat he’d lied. It was that somewhere inside that lie, there had been feelings that were real and I had absolutely no idea what to do with that.
CHAPTER 37
WILL
The car disappeared into the traffic, taking the woman of my dreams with it. It was the strangest thing, watching that car disappear and not knowing if I’d ever see her again. I stayed where I was anyway, not because I thought she’d suddenly change her mind and tell the driver to bring her back, but because again, I couldn’t seem to move.
“She’s gone, man,” Nate said.
“I can see that.” I didn’t look at him, instead just staring at the street with my hands clenched so tight, my knuckles ached. “That’s the fucking problem. She’s gone and she’s not coming back, is she?”
“She just needs some space,” he said. “That was a lot. I’m assuming she didn’t find out from you what’s been going on?”
I shook my head. “Alex, Jesse, and I were talking. She overheard us.”
“Ouch.” He groaned. “That sucks.”
I let out a short, humorless laugh. “You think?”
Nate stepped closer. “I’m sorry, bro. I know what you’re going through right now.”
“No, you don’t.” I finally slid my hands into my pockets. “It’s not the same, Nate.”
He looked back at me for another beat, searching for something I wasn’t sure he’d find before he nodded. “She’s in love with someone she doesn’t think exists right now. It might not be the same, but it’s not that different either.”
“She says she doesn’t know who the hell I am, and you’re telling me you really get that?”
He shrugged. “I get loving someone and not knowing how to fix it. I get watching them walk away and not being able to stop it. I get that desperate feeling you get when you’re losing the only person who really matters to you.”
I blinked slowly. “Yeah, maybe you do get it then. Any ideas on what to do now?”
He let out a bark of dry laughter. “Fuck if I know. I went after Kate immediately, but you can’t do that.”
I rocked my head from side to side, my insides feeling like they were being torn apart by a rogue werewolf. “Yeah. Lucky for you, Kate wasn’t slated to marry your brother.”
He winced. “Fair enough.”
I swallowed hard, the pain in my chest somehow doubling. Until a few seconds ago, I wouldn’t have thought it was possible for it to get worse, but as the weight of reality sank in, the hurt somehow kept growing.
“I knew I was only standing in for him. I didn’t plan to…”
“Fall in love with her,” he finished for me when I trailed off. “You didn’t mean to fall in love with her. That is where you were going with that, right?”
I huffed out a sound that might’ve been a laugh if it didn’t feel like my chest was caving in. “Yeah. That.”
He reached out and squeezed my shoulder. “Just give her some time, man. Overhearing what she did must’ve been a massive shock to her system. Just give her some time to process and we’ll take it from there.”
“Didn’t you just say that you chased after Kate the second she found out who you were?”
He sighed, but inclined his chin in a nod. “Yeah, I did, but to be fair, I’d only just found out who she was too. Neither of us had been lying to the other.”
I groaned, my eyes sliding shut. Guilt slammed into me all over again.God, the look on Eliza’s face before she got into that car…
“Fuck it. I need to fix this. I’m going after her even if she is marrying our brother,” I said, opening my eyes again and straightening up a little as urgency shot through me. “Where do you think Kate took her? I can’t just let her go, man. I know I lied to her, but everything I told her, who I was when I was with her, that was all true. I was real. I was me. Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t be Jesse. She needs to know that.”
“You will tell her,” he said. “You might even fix it eventually, but not like this.”
