Page 44 of Gilded Fake

Or maybe I’d ask what she has on him, what she did, to make him decide she was the one.

Or maybe she didn’t do anything. Maybe I did.

I told him to commit, and he did.

So as much as I want to demand how he could have done this, why he chose her, I don’t have that right. I don’t have a right to anything from him—I never did. He knows about our past. He knows the truth. He has all the facts, and he made his decision, and I have to respect that.

I have to accept that it’s over. I lost.

I’ve lost him for good. He wants to spend the rest of his life with Dixie, and whatever we had, it meant little enough to him that he could walk away without so much as an explanation. Maybe it was all in my head, just a desperate girl reeling with grief from the loss of her brother and the rejection of her family, trying to find something to hold onto. There’s no other reason I’d put meaning in something that he was just doing to prove a point, to humiliate me or even get back at me for what I did to him.

And how can I blame him? I walked away from Rylan when he treated me badly, even when he wanted me back. Why should Colt be any more forgiving? He has no reason to forgive his bully, even when I want him back.

Instead of being pissed that my pep talk sent him into Dixie’s arms, I should be happy for him. As much as it hurts, I should be glad it helped in whatever small way. Sure, selfishly I dreamed that it would make him realize his feelings for me, not her. But that’s not what happened, and it’s time for me to move on with my life and stop living in the past. That week last year meant so much to me, but it’s not like we would have been together if he hadn’t forgotten it.

The past two weeks, when he’s come into the club, were torture and ecstasy at the same time, but they were no more real than the week last year. It’s not like we were dating. He never asked me out. The dancing never left the club after that one night, and even then, it never went further than the parking lot. It was just a fling driven by lust and rose-colored memories. He never promised me anything, never professed feelings. He continued to date Dixie in his daylight hours, to show her off, to take her to prom and be her dutiful boyfriend. I was never more than a dirty little secret, a prospective mistress at best, a gullible fool at worst.

A mistake.

Colt collapses into the chair at their table, and I look away, because I can’t watch Dixie cling to him like a leech, preening all the while.

I raise my hand and ask to be excused to the restroom. I walk out on stiff legs and head for the bleachers. The thought of smoking makes me nauseous, so I just sit there, staring at the green grass. Eventually, Harper shows up.

“Skipping the rest of the day?” she asks.

“I don’t feel well.”

“Don’t blame you,” she says, pulling out her cigarettes. “If Royal put a ring on someone else, I’d be in prison right now. But hey, maybe I could get to know my dad.”

“Say hi to mine too.”

She cracks a grin, then sobers after lighting up. “Seriously, though. You okay?”

“Not really,” I admit. “But I will be. I mean, I kinda have to be, right?”

“I guess,” she says, slowly rolling the cherry of her cigarette along the edge of the metal bench. “Or you could ask him what happened.”

“We know what happened,” I point out.

“I don’t know, he looked awfully happy with you the other night,” she says.

“He doesn’t owe me an explanation,” I say glumly. “I want to pretend she manipulated him because, well, it’s Dixie. But maybe she didn’t do anything to him, didn’t hold anything over his head. Maybe he just loves her.”

“Maybe.”

“I don’t want to accept it because that means accepting that he’ll never be mine,” I admit. “But I have to. He’s getting fucking married, Harper. It’s pretty damn hard to argue with that. As much as I want to believe we had something, we don’t anymore.”

“That doesn’t mean it wasn’t real,” she says. “Or that you can’t feel sad about it.”

“I’m done feeling sad,” I say with a sigh. “And it doesn’t matter what it was before. Now it’s nothing. He chose her—permanently.”

Harper leans her head on my shoulder. We sit there in silence while she finishes her cigarette. “If it makes you feel any better,” she says at last. “I’ve known Colt for a few years, and he’s always been with Dixie, but I’ve never seen him act that way with her. The way he was acting when y’all were in that elevator…”

“Like a cocky asshole?” I ask, rolling my eyes.

“Happy,” she says.

If there was anything left of my shriveled, blackened heart, it would break. She could have said anything else, even that he acted like a man in love, and it wouldn’t have hurt worse. Love doesn’t always make a person happy. Love can be torture. It makes people stupid.

---