Page 120 of If You Need Me

Ican’t deal with being in my penthouse. Everything reminds me of Wilhelmina, so I go home for the weekend. But before I do, I schedule my cleaner to come while I’m gone so when I return, I’m not slapped in the face by my failure.

Like an idiot, I leave on Friday afternoon, and the two-point-fiveish-hour drive takes four. My regrets are excessive by the time I arrive. Because now I have to explain why I’m here, looking wrecked.

“Where’s Wilhelmina? When you said you were coming to visit, I thought you would bring her along.” Mom frowns.

“We broke up.” Saying it aloud feels like I’m being stabbed in the chest.

“What? Why? What happened?”

“I messed up,” I admit. My eyes are hot, and my chest aches in a way I’ve never experienced before.

“Well, you can fix it, can’t you?”

I shake my head. “I don’t think so.”

“Come on, sweetheart.” She takes me by the elbow and leads me inside.

My younger sister, Paris, is already in the kitchen, helpingMom with dinner. Her brow furrows when she sees me. “What happened?”

“Dallas and Wilhelmina broke up.”

She drops the potato into the pot on the stove. “What did you do, Dallas?”

I flop into the chair and accept a glass of fresh-squeezed lemonade. I’d love a shot of vodka or seven to go with it, but I should probably be sober for this.

“Why do you assume it was me?”

“Well, was it?”

I word-vomit the whole horrible story, starting with all the things that happened when we were kids, down to every shitty little thing my friends did in high school, and all the ways I tried to make it better—like going to the custodial staff and secretly painting her locker when it was defaced after everyone else had gone home, or stopping one of the guys on the hockey team from ruining her student council president’s speech, and ending with the breakup in my car and the shitty office gossip. Marrying someone who doesn’t want to marry me was a future I didn’t want.

Mom plants her hands on her hips. “Dallas Mattias Bright, what were you thinking?”

“About which part?”

“Any of it! All of it! That poor girl.” She tosses her dish rag on the counter. “And to think, we just ambushed her! All of us showing up out of the blue, and she had to entertain us andpretendthe engagement was real.” She shakes her head. “I don’t understand where your head was with any of this.”

“In his ass,” Paris mutters.

I glare. “You’re not helping.”

She gives me a look. “Well, you’re sitting here, looking the part of the sad sack, so you’re not doing much to help your case either.”

I drop my head into my hands. “I’m such a screw-up.”

Mom sighs. “You screwed up, but you’re not a screw-up,Dallas. Far from it. But the way you went about this whole thing didn’t leave much room for it to go right. Why not be honest with her from the start? You could have taken her to prom and fixed it all years ago. Why wait all these years to tell her the truth? Why set it all up asnotreal when you want the opposite?”

“It just…spun out of control on me.” I run my finger along the rim of the glass. “I thought I was protecting her after she protected me.”

My mom and sister are more than happy to recount the horrible story to my dad and brothers when we all sit down to family dinner.

“It’s pretty on brand for you,” Manning says.

Ferris agrees. “I mean, you ratted out your friends and spent your own money on new student council posters but let her believe you were one of the ones who’d defaced them.”

“I still don’t get that,” Manning muses.

“What right did I have to tell her? Because I let it happen in the first place. My friends were being dicks. She didn’t deserve it. Like hey, listen I fixed this for you and stuff but also stole your bike once? She never owed me that opportunity. Just like she doesn’t deserve the shit I’ve put her through these past months.” That’s ultimately why I ended things. She deserved better. That and being in love with someone who doesn’t love me back hurts too fucking much.

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