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“I’m not done.”

His brows shoot up. “How can there possibly be more?”

“Because, as you’ve pointed out, I’m very stubborn,” I say and a hint of a smile tugs at his lips but I can’t return the gesture. “After I watched their marriage fall apart, I was determined that I would do things differently. As a little girl, I dreamed about finding a good man, someone who was kind and strong, someone who would love me with every fiber of his being and cherish me the way my father never did. I was so sure that love was real because of my grandparents’ story and I just knew it was out there waiting for me so when I met Conner during my sophomore year of high school, I was all in. I thought I’d met the one for me and I built this whole fantasy in my head of what our lives would be like but I was young and naive and I trusted way too easily.”

I peek over at him and watch his eyes darken as his jaw clenches. “This is the guy you mentioned before?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not gonna lie, Mama,” he practically snarls. “I’ve spent a hell of a lot of time trying to imagine what he could have done to you to hurt you this badly…”

Nodding, I look back at our hands and grasp them in my other hand. “I’m getting there.”

“Okay.” He squeezes my hand again, giving me the encouragement I need and I take a deep breath and let my mind fall back into the images of my past.

“Like I mentioned that night at the bar, we were crazy about each other and we ran off to Vegas to get married. My birthday is in August so we had to wait until then but the moment I was legal, we took off. That morning, we just hopped in Conner’s car and left everything else behind. My mother was beside herself, freaking out and calling me repeatedly as we drove to Nevada, telling me that it was a mistake and that I needed to turn around and come home. Of course, I didn’t listen.”

A sad smile pulls at his lips as he leans forward and cups my cheek in his hand. “Of course, you didn’t.”

“Well,” I reply with a half-hearted laugh. “What else would you expect? One Elvis impersonator later, we were married and we decided to head back to our hotel to… uh, consummate our union.”

“Izzy?” he asks, arching a brow. “Are you suddenly nervous to talk about sex?”

I shrug, fighting back a smile as heat rushes to my cheeks. Only Diego could make me smile and blush while I’m telling this horrid story. “Apparently around you, I am. I don’t want you to think of me with him like that.”

“Done,” he fires back, nodding. “Now continue please.”

Right.

I take another breath, letting it breathe strength back into me as I nod. “Something happened on the way back to the hotel… I don’t know what but we were about a mile from the hotel when he started a fight with me. Honestly, I can’t even remember what it was about but I do know one moment I was crazy happy and the next, we’re yelling at each other on the sidewalk. People were looking at me with such pity as he screamed at me and I tried so hard to understand what had set him off but in an instant, I was reminded of my father and it broke something inside me.”

“Baby, please let me hold you,” he pleads and I shake my head again before scooting close enough for my knee to touch his leg. Sighing, he drags our hands up and presses his lips to my fingers. “Is that the end of the story?”

“No.”

He winces and rakes his hand through his hair as he nods, the muscles in his jaw flexing. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”

“I can stop,” I tell him. Surprisingly, I don’t want to though. Now that this is all coming out, I want him to know everything. I want him to understand me and why I act the way I do sometimes. He shakes his head, meeting my gaze.

“Keep going.”

“Eventually, he walked off and left me standing on the sidewalk by myself so I decided to head back to the hotel, thinking that he’d show up soon enough and we’d be able to talk things out. I waited in our room for hours before he finally came back but when he did, he apologized for everything and said he just freaked out a little bit. He swore to me that he had worked his shit out and that we were good so I let it go.”

Looking down at my left hand, I can still picture the way the simple gold ring he gave me looked on my finger and my chest aches as I look back up at Diego.

“Two days later, we went back home and started looking for apartments in Baton Rouge so we could go to college together. But about a week after we got back, I got a message from this girl named Amber on my social media. She claimed that she was Conner’s fiancée and that I needed to get over my obsession with him. I didn’t believe her at first but then she sent me photo after photo of the two of them together and the cherry on top of it all was that she’d just given birth to his baby the day before.”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me…”

I let out a laugh but it lacks any conviction. “I wish. I found out that he’d been sleeping with her for a year and a half, right under my nose, and when I confronted him with it, he just laughed. He thought it was so funny that he’d been able to get away with it for so long and he called me a naive little girl for believing that he would actually want to be married to me. I was furious and it felt like someone had sunk their fist into my chest and ripped my heart right out. But all he did was grin as I screamed at him and called him every foul name I could think of. When I told him that we were through, he just shrugged.”

My chest burns as the memory plays in my mind and I pull one of my hands from Diego’s to press it against my heart as tears sting my eyes.

“That was the worst part, I think. He was so unaffected over losing me and it had been a game to him all along. I was something to play with just to see how much he could make me hurt.”

Diego squeezes my hand tightly and I look up at him, surprised by the look of murder in his eyes. “What’s his last name?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I tell him, shaking my head. Sure, I could tell Diego his full name and he could go kick his ass for me but what would that do? It wouldn’t change anything. It wouldn’t heal the pain that I carry around.