I threw the magazine at his chest.
“What the fuck is this?”
It bounced off him and hit the floor, pages splaying open to their engagement photos.
“Andrea...”
“Three days.” My voice was shaking, I couldn’t stop it, couldn’t control it, and the anger was rising so fast it was making my vision blur. “Three days you didn’t answer my phone calls. I sat in my house throwing up every morning thinking your mother was dying, and you were, what? Posing for engagement photos? Picking out a fucking venue?”
“My mother needed me.”
“Your mother needed you. That’s your answer. Your mother needed you so badly you couldn’t send me one text in seventy-two hours.”
He stood there with his hands at his sides, eyes on the floor, giving me nothing.
“Were you sleeping with her?” The words came out cold, flat, and I barely recognized my own voice. “This whole time. While you were in my bed, were you in hers too? Were you fucking her behind my back the entire goddamn time?”
His head came up, eyes sharp for the first time since he walked onto this floor. “No. I would never...”
“You would never? Because you just walked onto this floor with her arm through yours and a magazine announcing your wedding. So don’t stand there and tell me what you would never do because everything I thought I knew about you just blew up in my face.”
His jaw was working, the muscle jumping under his skin, and he looked like he was in pain but I didn’t care. I didn’t care if he was hurting because I was drowning and he was the one who held me under.
“Are you marrying her?” I asked.
“Yes.”
The word hit me in the chest. I grabbed the desk because my knees were going.
“Why?”
“Because I have to.”
“You have to? That’s what you’re giving me? You have to?” My voice was rising and I couldn’t stop it, didn’t want to stop it. “You’re a grown man, Finneas. You’re a goddamn king. Nobody makes you do anything. So don’t stand there feeding me bullshit excuses like I’m some idiot who’s going to nod and walk away.”
Nothing. Eyes on the floor.
“Look at me!” He didn’t. “Fucking look at me when I’m talking to you!”
His eyes came up. Red-rimmed, hollow. I didn’t care. I didn’t care because my chest was caving in and he was just standing there letting it happen.
“You lied to me. You looked me in the face and you lied. Every day, every night, you were lying. And I believed you because I’m a goddamn idiot who thought you were different, who thought you actually gave a shit about me, and the whole time you were planning this behind my back.”
“It wasn’t like that...”
“Then what was it like? Tell me! Explain it! Because right now all I see is a coward who couldn’t be honest with me for five fucking minutes!”
He flinched. Good. I wanted him to flinch. I wanted every word to land like a fist because he deserved it, he deserved all of it, every ugly furious thing I had in me.
“You were never going to choose me, were you?” My voice cracked on the word choose and I hated myself for it. “This whole time, the porch, the dog, the library, the birthdays, all of it was just you killing time until mommy picked your bride for you.”
“Andrea...”
“Don’t. Don’t you dare say my name like that, like you’re sorry, like this hurts you. You don’t get to be hurt right now. I get to be hurt. Me. The person you just destroyed.”
He stood there. Silent. Taking it. Not fighting, not explaining, not doing a single goddamn thing to save this, and the silencewas worse than anything he could have said because silence meant he’d already made his choice and I wasn’t it.
“Was any of it real?” I asked. The screaming had burned out of me. What was left was small, raw. I hated how it sounded. “Any of it. Please, Finneas. Just tell me the truth.”
