I’d done what was necessary.
I just had to hold it together a little longer.
I pushed the hotel room door open and walked blindly towards the elevators, wishing I’d given a little more thought to how I was going to get the rest of my stuff since it was in the room I’d been sharing with Zane. I’d just leave it all. I had everything essential in my bag. Nothing in that room was worth facing him after what I’d just done.
I turned the corner towards the elevator and stopped in my tracks.
Zane was sitting against the wall with his head in his hands. He looked up at me slowly, eyes red and raw, hair disheveled.
He started to talk, then cleared his throat and tried again. “I just wanted to make sure you got back safely. Johnny sometimes…I just wanted to make sure you were safe.”
He may as well have punched me.
In that fairy tale I sometimes tell myself, I collapsed sobbing into his arms and poured my heart out, telling him why I’d done it and begged forgiveness.
In reality, I looked away and raised my chin. “I’m fine.”
“Maia?”
When I turned back, he was up on one knee holding out a ring.
In some ways, what came next was harder than the degradation I’d endured in the hotel room.
I found a place deep inside myself that I hadn’t known existed prior to that moment, a place where it was frigid and still and nothing mattered. Because if anything mattered I was going to crumble into a million pieces and never be whole again.
I wasn’t going to let him give up his dreams for me. He deserved better.
I looked at the ring instead of at his face and managed to say, “Don’t be pathetic, Zane.”
I turned for the elevator and managed not to look at him until the doors were sliding closed and I caught the moment his shoulders crumpled.
27
MAIA
Now
* * *
“Find me a flight home,” I said as soon as the wheels touched down on the tarmac. I couldn’t look at Zane when I said it, didn’t want to know what his reaction was. I was already falling back under his spell and that could bring nothing but trouble.
The very last thing I needed was for someone to spot us together, put two and two together on the song Nate had been singing and who I was, and unleash an even bigger wave of chaos on my life.
I connected my phone to the Wi-Fi and it started to buzz, catching up on notifications. And it kept buzzing. And buzzing. And buzzing.
Panic twisted in my stomach. It wasn’t the first time this had happened. The first had been the day after Bill’s wedding.
Zane was staring, and the concerned look on his face made me want to throw the stupid buzzing phone at him. He didn’t get to be the nice guy now.
“Are you that popular or is something up?” he asked, nodding at the phone.
I wasn’t going to let him see me be a coward, so I pulled up my texts and opened the thread with Ophelia.
Call me as soon as you land.
As though I hadn’t been planning to give her a piece of my mind the second I had a signal.
I called her and she answered immediately. “Hi, sunshine! How was your flight?”
