Page 77 of Hat Trick

And then, “It was wrong on so many levels, Gwen.Everylevel. I didn’t—I never planned to go through withit.”

“Except that you clearly did, Marshall.” I jerk my chin to the right, squeezing my eyes shut against the hurt in my chest. “Did you even need an Accounting class or did you sign up for it because you wanted to win your littlebet?”

“Gwen,listen—”

I slash at the air with a flat palm, stopping him in his tracks when he tries to step closer. Disgust and a healthy dose of mistrust form into a ball of nausea in my stomach, twisting and twisting and twisting until my palms turn sweaty and my heart thumps furiously. “You let me believe that you fell for me,” I say, my voice growing stronger with anger. “You sat behind meevery dayfor a semester asking me out—and none of it was real.” The laugh that escapes me is caustic and bitter, and in it, I hear traces of my mother. The thought alone is enough to make me snap. “You did a real good job of pretending to console me after Adam gave me the boot. No wonder you were so adamant that I dump him. Obviously,youwere waiting in the wings to swoop in and take hisplace.”

“Fuck the bet, Gwen!” Marshall storms forward, all masculine perfection, before abruptly twisting away. His muscular arms go up, his hands settling on the back of his neck. Two deep breaths expand his shoulders. “The bet may have been what landed me in the damn class, but it wasn’t what made me want you. Seeing you three times a week was the highlight of that semester. I wanted to hear your voice call me out for trying to cheat off you. I wanted to see your skirt ride up your smooth skin. Seeing you kiss him drove me fucking insane, and not any of that had to do with thebet.”

“I don’t believeyou.”

“What?” Marshall’s voice sounds as though it’s been carved from granite, cold and infinitelyhard.

I steel my heart against him. “I said that I don’t believeyou.”

He’s a goddamn rat-snake bastard, Gwenny, my mother would tell me right now. And even though Iknowthat Marshall is like none of Adaline’s ex-husbands, including my father, the words won’t shake. They eat at my soul, twine up my legs like twisting vines, suffocating and all toofamiliar.

“Gwen,” Marshall grinds out, his palms coming to face me like he’s trying to calm a panicked animal, “we’ve come a wicked long way since college. A long fuckin’ way.” One of his big hands lands on his chest, right above his heart. “I messed up and I fully admit that. But you’ve got to trust me when I say that those were the actions of an insecure kid who wanted to fit in, and they sure as hell aren’t the sort of thing I would do now or everagain.”

But you’ve got to trustme.

Marshall’s words ring exceedingly loud in my head, and it hurts—oh, ithurts—the way I feel so torn. My stomach turns to knots and my palms turn all slick, and all I can hear is Adaline whispering to me about shitty friends and cheating husbands and so much mistrust I could choke on it as though it’s a physicalmanifestation.

And in the end, all I have is one resounding realization: “I can’t dothis.”

Marshall’s hopeful expression hardens, just as it did at Zoe’s engagement party—and I almost laugh because hadn’t I suspected that this would happen all along? Hadn’t I known, even on the day of my father’s funeral, that I would be the one to wreck MarshallHunt?

“Are we over because of the damn bet?” he asks me, his chest rising and falling with shallowbreaths.

My own breathing isn’t that much better. “You should have told me about it long beforetoday.”

“Answer my question, Gwen.” Gray eyes hone in on me, unwavering in their intensity. “Are you fucking breaking up with me because of shit from six yearsago?”

No,I’m desperate to say,I’m breaking up with you because I’mbroken.

Dramatic, maybe. Coming from anyone else, I’d readily call bullshit. But standing in my shoes as I am? I hear nothing but my mother talking about her shitty husbands, see nothing but the string of men who left me with a damn gift card and a pat on theshoulder.

“You asked me to trust you,” I say, my voice raspy from spilled tears and the sobs threatening to burst out into the open, “and I did. You’ve pushed me to open up, to prove to you that I’m willing to give you my heart. When you asked me to dance at Zoe’s engagement party, I said no because I’ve spent the last year working on myself. Trying to be a better me, a version of myself who trusts easily and lets down emotionalwalls.”

My hand curls against my heart, as though I can possibly stop it from breaking. “I trusted you today when it would have been all too easy to believe what the tabloids reported. I came here for you, to show you how much I love you.” Voice cracking with emotion, I add, “But when push comes to shove, I can’t take the final step.”I’m too much of my mother. “Somehow, I’ll hurt you or you’ll hurt me, and Ican’t doit.”

I can’t be my mother in her bed for days on end, crying after another husband files for adivorce.

I can’t be the girl who sought affection from anyone and everyone, begging for scraps of love, and who didn’t even know how to loveherself.

I can’t be the woman I am today, staring at a man like Marshall Hunt and breaking his heart because I’m terrified to let my icy armor melt forgood.

“So you’re going to run,” Marshall says without heat. He doesn’t shift closer, and his expression is blank andunreadable.

A tear slips over the crest of my cheek. I want to say no, to leap into his arms and snuggle in close, but if I can’t trust him—if I can’t trustanyone—then what good does that do, for either of us? And if a mention of a bet from six years ago sends my progress rewinding faster than I can blink, then I can’t imagine I’m in a place to date anyone . . . not evenMarshall.

“You aren’t your mother”—my gaze flicks to Marshall’s face as he speaks—“and you aren’t your father. You know how to love, Gwen, and you know how to love hard. So I’m going to assume that if you walk out that door, then it’s simply a case that you don’t love me enough tostay.”

His words burrow like a knife in my side, crippling in theirsharpness.

And then I speak my utter truth, carving open my fears and letting them spill out: “I don’t know if I love myselfenough.”

I don’t think I’m good enough foryou.

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