Page 132 of What's Left of Us

Swallows her words.

And then dips a fry into the side of marinara sauce because she prefers that over ketchup.

We eat in silence, just like most of the meals we shared at the end of our relationship. We held everything back then. Let it build and build and build until the feelings combusted.

It ruined us.

We walk out to the parking lot together and stop at my truck parked in the back lot, blanketed by the trees. “I’ll look into the Welsh thing,” I tell her.

It’s the only thing I offer. The only thing I can. I may not like Welsh, but that doesn’t mean I want to see him with a target on his back.

Georgia kicks a pebble, watching it tumble underneath the undercarriage of my truck. “For whatever it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

Leaning my back against the door, I ask, “For what?”

Her eyes lift. “For everything. I thought we would be enough to drown out the noise. I never thought we’d wind up here.”

Didn’t she though? “You could have tried harder, Peaches.”

Her eyes sadden. “You could have too. I asked you to stop. I asked you to choose me.”

I had tried. Time and time again, I tried to glue the pieces back together, only to realize they were for the wrong puzzle. “What you refuse to accept was that I did choose you.”

“No.” Her throat bobs. “You chose my father.”

Closing my eyes, I drop my head back and let the cool air caress my face.

Georgia’s hand cups my cheek, bringing my head down until I’m facing her. She steps into me until her chest brushes mine. The pad of her thumb rubs against my bottom lip before her hand settles on my jawline.

“You and I were good at a lot of things that made us work back then,” she says, her other hand reaching between us and grazing the growing bulge trapped behind the zipper of my jeans. “We were good at this.”

She lets go of my face and reaches around me to open the back door.

“What are you doing?” I ask, the question no more than a whisper that gets lost in the wind.

“I don’t know,” she says while walking around me and climbing into the back.

Her hands go to the coat she didn’t button before we left, peeling it open and draping it over the back seat.

“Georgia,” I all but groan.

She slides in and pats the spot beside her.

I find myself walking over, hovering at the open door, and watching as her hands go to the hem of her shirt before peeling that off next.

My throat thickens with a swallow.

“We were good at making each other feel good,” she says, her striptease continuing as her hands go down to the button of her jeans and popping open the button before slowly sliding down the zipper until a pair of black panties peeks through.

Lifting her hips, she pushes them down her hips until she’s in nothing but a bra and panties. The cold air pebbles her nipples, making the hard peaks poke through the material of her bra.

She gets onto her hands and knees and crawls over to me. I stay frozen where I’m standing outside the truck cab, my cock thickening as I stare at her cleavage inches from my face and the familiar necklace hanging between her breasts.

“But the thing we were best at,” she finishes, getting onto her knees and curling her fingers around my shoulders, “was pretending like this wasmore.”

Her words are a knife to the heart, shoving the dull blade into the beating organ and twisting the handle.

Was that what we were doing? Pretending? Lying to ourselves and not just to each other?

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