Page 101 of Tell Me Something True

“You can tell yourself that all you want. And maybe you even believe it, but I always knew the truth. That ten-year plan of yours wasn’t meant to include me. I had too much baggage. Too many scars. Too many secrets. I wasn’t the girl you were meant to be with. The one you were meant to build that life with.”

“You were the girl I wanted. I loved you.”

“You didn’t love me,” she corrected softly. “You needed me. And while that would have been enough for me, it wouldn’t have been enough for you. Not for a lifetime.”

He was… lost. Lost and terrified of being alone.

He whirled around, unable to face her and the way she stood there, calmly, methodically ripping open every goddamn scar she’d given him.

Tearing him apart.

She was wrong. She was lying once again.

He had loved her. He hadn’t used her.

What he’d felt for her had been real.

“Why here?” he asked, facing her. “Why Mount Laurel?”

“Because of you.”

Verity’s words from earlier rushed through his already spinning head.

She’s here because she wants you back.

“Although,” Tabitha continued dryly, “not for the reason that put that horrified expression on your face.”

He wasn’t horrified. He was pissed. The fuck. Off.

“I told you that night at the bar,” he reminded her. “You walked out of my life. You do not get to walk back into it. Not now. Not ever.”

Pursing her lips, she gave him a you are such an arrogant asshole look. “I never thought otherwise. No matter what you, your family, or your over-inflated sense of self-worth think, I didn’t uproot my entire life and accept a job in a new town on the off-chance that a man I was with when I was eighteen, a man I haven’t seen or spoken to in ten years, a man who’s made it crystal clear he wants nothing to with me, will give me a second chance.”

Sure, when she put it that way that whole arrogant asshole look made sense.

And defined him perfectly because he still didn’t believe her.

“Then why?”

“When I saw the job opening, I remembered the way you talked about Mount Laurel. How much you loved it. How warm and welcoming you said it was and I thought maybe it could be the place.”

“The place?”

“The place where I belong.”

“Mount Laurel isn’t perfect,” he warned her. “Not everyone is warm and welcoming—”

She raised her eyebrows at him, the look so piercing, he rubbed at a spot on his chest. “So I’ve noticed.”

Ha, ha, fucking ha.

“We have poverty and crime and our fair share of assholes and shitty weather,” he went on, desperate now to convince her that this wasn’t the place for her. “Just like everywhere else. If you think it’s some hidden Southwestern Pennsylvania utopia, you’re sadly mistaken.”

She studied him, as if she knew damn well what he was doing. And why.

When she finally spoke, it was to say what his family claimed were his three favorite words.

“You were right.”

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