“What the fuck—” the man mutters under his breath, hurriedly dropping her. He struggles to pull up his pants, while she frantically fixes her dress and smooths her hair.
Finally, she raises her face up.
The moment her eyes meet mine, I can see the shock and realization in them.
She knows as much as I do that we’re over. There’s no fixing this.
There’s no apology, and there’s no forgiveness, not after this. There’s only pain, so much pain.
Suddenly, an even heavier crushing feeling of disappointment and betrayal tears through my body with the realization that this is not the first time.
This whole time, I’ve been played for a fool.
“Cole, please, I—I—” she struggles for words, but there is nothing to say. There’s only the truth, and I already know what that is.
“Please, I know how this looks, but I swear, I can fix this. I can fi—”
She’s got to be fucking kidding me.
Without letting her get another word out, I turn around and walk out of the cramped room that now smells stale and disgusting. She races after me, but I’m faster, and I shut the door tightly behind me, bolting it from outside and locking them in.
I take two steps away from it, staring at the closed door as my heart contracts painfully in my chest.
I can hear her fists hitting the door, but I don’t care. They can fucking die in there for all I care.
Turning around, I take slow steps, stumbling back into the hallway.
It feels like the walls are closing in on me, and there just isn’t enough oxygen in the building anymore. I need to breathe, and I can’t do that here. Not when she’s so close to me.
I push through the door across from the supply closet.
“Fifth door on the left, not right,” I chuckle humorlessly.
If I hadn’t gotten the directions wrong, I wouldn’t have seen her. I would’ve still been just as excited to give her the flowers and gifts right after she just let another man screw her against a wall.
This is the woman I was going to marry.
The woman I was going to have a child with.
Chapter 2
Broken Promises
Cole
I sit quietly at my dining table, staring into oblivion. There’s a calmness in me now that scares even me. It’s an acceptance of what has happened. An acceptance of the fact that life as I knew it has forever changed.
The woman I loved—the woman I thought I would spend the rest of my life with has betrayed me in the worst possible way.
Every fixture in our apartment that reminds me of her now fills me with revulsion. In the span of only a few hours, everything I thought I knew about her has changed.
Every dream that we were meant to share together—a future that is now no longer possible—is gone, replaced instead by a hollow emptiness.
Now, all I want is to know the full truth.
My bags sit beside me on the floor. My trip to Boston was originally only going to be for a few days. I was supposed to be attending my best friend’s wedding tomorrow, take the next day to rest, and then come back home to my pregnant fiancée.
That was the original plan. She said she wasn’t feeling up to flying, and I didn’t want to be away from her for too long, in case she needed something. Needless to say, my plans have changed.