The following moment proved to be the longest of Nick’s life. The concrete sidewalk bit into his knee. A motorcycle roared past, filling the air with static. Aubrey’s mouth worked while a glittering tear dove down her cheek. “Tell me that’s not true.”
He grimaced. And said nothing.
“What the fuck?” she finally managed. “What the fuck, Nick? Howcouldyou?”
He stumbled to his feet. Her reaction made no sense. She’dlefthim. “You were gone.” He reached for her—stupid, stupid, so stupid, but he couldn’t control the way his mind screamed at him to ease her pain, even if he didn’t understand its source. “You left me.”
“For two weeks!” Her shriek drew the eyes of passersby. “And only because I had the flu! Was it seriously too much to ask for you to keep it in your pants for that long? After everything we said to each other? After everything we did? Did that meannothingto you?”
He froze. The flu? Theflu? No, she’d gone off to New York without him. She’d—
Oh.
Fucking.
God.
Pieces snapped together in his mind, a nauseating whirl of understanding. She’d gotten the flu, which meant that New York... She’d never even left.
Oh, fuck. He couldn’t breathe. He was going to pass out. He’d been lied to, and, like an idiot, he’d fallen for it. Completely. And now he’d cheated. He’d destroyed the best thing that had ever happened to him in the worst way he could possibly imagine.
And he was his father. Exactly him.
He lurched forward.
“Stay away from me,” Aubrey hissed, evading his grasp.
“Aubs, no, you have to listen. I thought—”
“No, you didn’t!” she shrieked, pain and anger billowing off her. “You didn’t think. If you had, you wouldn’t be planning a shotgun wedding with Tansy Burroughs on a fucking park bench without even bothering to break up with me first.”
Every word slashed him open. Jesus Christ, he’d hurt the one person he would gladly die for, and now he wanted to take Aubrey’s accusations and drive them deeper, stab himself in the fucking throat with the tears knifing down her pale cheeks.
“I’m so sorry,” he croaked. “I fucked up. Oh my god, I fucked up so bad. But your dad told me you left. He said you went to New York. That it was over.”
“He didwhat?”
“Yeah.”
She recoiled, and then she was stumbling back, away from him, opening a distance he couldn’t bear.
He scrambled after her, but she didn’t have to go far. Her banged-up Subaru hung halfway in the road. She’d clearly jerked it up onto the sidewalk in order to witness his proposal to another woman.
“Aubs, wait!” he shouted.
But she only slammed the door and gunned the engine, squealing away in a whirlwind of tires and acrid exhaust.
He watched her go, his soul peeling from him in long, bloody strips.
He’d cheated on her.
Cheated.
He was everything he despised.
Still, every molecule in his body quivered with the need to chase her. He would go to her window. If she wouldn’t talk to him there, he’d walk to New York. He would grovel outside her dorm-room door, write letters in his own blood and push them through the crack underneath until she had no choice but to relent.
Except when he glanced back, Tansy still sat on the park bench, the dandelion limp on her finger, pity in her eyes.
