Page 55 of One-Star Romance

She clenched her fists, unclenched them, and forced herself to say, “No. I’m so sorry, but no.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t think I’m ever going to be ready to move in together.”

He stepped back, features frozen in hurt. “Then, what are we doing?”

She tried to find the right combination of words, but there was nothing to say to make this better. “I think this is so close to what it should be, but there’s just something in me that can’t…And you’re a wonderful person. Some other woman is going to snatch you up—”

“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t try to…” The train was growing closer now, the front of it hurtling toward them.

“I’m so sorry.”

“You said that already.” He turned away from her. “I need to…I can’t sit with you. I’m going to a different car.”

“Okay.”

He took a couple of steps, then ran back and gathered her in his arms, holding her one last time against his broad, solid chest. She breathed him in, knowing that she might never see him again or that when she did, they’d be strangers to each other, all the important and vital things they’d shared gone hazy, if they remembered them at all. Then he pulled himself away and strode down the platform, shoulders shaking, not looking back.

When the doors opened, she found an empty row in a sparsely populated car. The train lurched, then began to glide back toward the city.

Trying to fight off tears, she reached for her phone to call Gabby. But Gabby was exhausted. And also, maybe Gabby wouldn’t understand.

Instead, she dialed her mother. Ellen answered on the second ring. “Natalie?”

“Hey, Mom,” Nat said, her voice breaking.

“Honey, what’s wrong?” her mom asked, and Natalie’s shoulders slumped at the familiar, comforting sound. She could go home to Philly for a few days, sleep in her childhood bed, start to recover. Yes, that would help.

“Jeff and I broke up,” she began.

“Oh no. Are you all right? What happened?”

“I…I don’t really know how to explain.”

Ellen made a sympathetic noise. “I had no idea you two weren’t happy. He always seemed so smitten. I thought he just doted on you.”

“He did.”

“Ah,” Ellen said, and Natalie could hear how valiantly her mom was struggling to hide her disappointment.

“I know you think I’m making a mistake,” Natalie said. “But I tried. I really tried. And I think I deserve to be smitten too.”

“Of course you do,” her mom began with such surprise and tenderness in her voice that for the first time, a possibility struck Natalie. Maybe, just maybe, Ellen didn’t even remember saying the things that had burned themselves into Natalie’s brain the night before her wedding. Maybe Ellen had simply been expressing a loose collection of thoughts rather than some unshakable, unchangeable truth about her daughter’s core.

Just when Natalie was about to ask, a voice in the background interrupted. “What’s going on?”

“Natalie and Jeff broke up,” her mother said quietly.

“Here,” the voice went on, and then the sound quality turned grainier as Natalie was yanked onto speakerphone. “Do you need me to talk some sense into him?” Greg asked, his booming voice grating against her ears. “If he needs a little mano a mano—”

“No, thank you,” Natalie said, her chest tightening. “He didn’t do anything wrong.”

“So, you broke up with him? That sounds like our little perfectionist,” Greg said, and Natalie swallowed the urge to tell him that she was not his little anything.

“Greg,” her mother said, frustration creeping into her tone. “Let’s not—”

“I’m just saying that the clock is ticking.”

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