Page 28 of Take What You Want

I admire the resolution with which she says it. While we’ve grown closer since she started dating Walker, I don’t know much about any of her previous relationships. The topic has never come up before, and honestly, it’d be strange to discuss with her.

Although it would be simple for Scar.

Cut and dry.

He cheated?

Fuck him. Relationship over and nothing else to say.

I always thought that’s how I would be, too. My mom said she knew I’d grow up and be a lawyer since I learned how to talk. I was always strong-willed, unwavering in my beliefs, and had a strong sense of self that needed to be a woman in a field like that.

But when I found out what Liam was doing, I can’t say that I didn’t consider pretending to not have seen his phone. To put it back on the nightstand, slip into bed, and pretend like everything was fine.

Sure, anger and betrayal cut through me like a hot knife and I wanted to rip open the shower door, shove his phone in his face, and demand answers.

But there was a small, devastatingly sad part of myself that had grown over the years and fed by him, that wanted me to let it go.

Because being with him meant that I didn’t have to be alone. I didn’t have to face the reality that I had failed and that seven years were for nothing.

And it gave renewed life to that ugly voice inside my head that loved to creep up at times when I’m most vulnerable. That no one else would find me attractive or worthy of love if I could be discarded as easily as Liam clearly did.

“When did you find out?” Walker asks.

I push the rice around my plate to distract me before I mutter, “Right before I came to visit you on tour last year.”

Walker’s eyes almost bulge out of his head. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Because I just wanted to enjoy a night away from everything I had going on back home.”

“So that’s why you were so upset that night…” Walker trails off, putting the pieces together.

We all went out to a club and I tried drowning all thoughts of what I caught on Liam’s phone under tequila and champagne, but it didn’t work. I ended the night crying on Nikolai’s shoulder and telling him everything, then hating myself the next morning for it. He didn’t need to see my tears or hear that another man didn’t want me,either.

“How did you find out?” Scar asks.

“His phone.”

Scar scoffs. “Of course. Men are so stupid.”

“Hey!” Walker looks at her, affronted. But Scar merely shrugs and goes back to eating.

“He left it out on his nightstand, face up, while he was in the shower.” I wasn’t snooping. It was literally right there. “And it kept buzzing and buzzing while I was trying to go to sleep, so I rolled over to silence it. And yeah…” I trail off, not wanting to say anything more.

God, it’s so fucking cliché it makes my teeth ache.

Two different girls, same exact text threads.

Flirting, photos, promises made that were supposed to be saved for me.

But it wasn’t the words of love or reassurances that he had a great night with them that caused my chest to cave and bile to rise to the back of the throat.

It was his responses to the photos they sent him of themselves.

Commenting on how perfect their toned bodies were, how beautiful they were splayed out for him and how he wished he could be there to touch every inch of them.

Touch them in ways he didn’t touch me anymore.

Maybe he wanted me to find them. Maybe he had been wanting out for a long time and never had the balls to tell me to my face, so he thought it would be easier if I was the one to do it.

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