Page 71 of Falling For You

“You knew.” I pointed at him. “You told me you could tell me in one week. Tomorrow is one week.” I shook my head.

“I was going to tell you. I told you that.” His eyes stayed on mine.

“When?” I interrupted, my heart pounding in my ears. “When were you going to tell me? After it was too late? After the papers were signed?”

He looked down at the ground, his shoulders slumping. “I don’t know. I didn’t want to hurt you. There is nothing either of us could do.”

“So you hid for these last couple of days?” I shot back. “Like a coward?”

Owen straightened and shook his head. “Actually, I had my attorneys looking into any way we could get out of the contract. I’ve been working with them nonstop.”

“And?”

“It’s ironclad.” He shook his head. “I never meant to hurt you, Violet.”

I laughed harshly, though there was no humor in it. “You didn’t want to hurt me? Owen, you’ve been lying to me this whole time! You let me think that we… that we had something real when you were just distracting me from what you were doing all along.”

“It wasn’t like that,” he insisted.

Desperation etched his words.

I almost wanted to believe him.

“I wasn’t dating you to distract you. I care about you, Violet. More than you know. That’s why this is so hard.”

I shook my head, the betrayal cutting deeper than I could have ever imagined. “How can I believe anything you say now? You’ve been lying to me from the start. You were planning this behind my back while pretending like you actually cared about me.”

I shook my head. “What’s the most embarrassing about this entire thing is that it’s only been a week of knowing you, and you manipulated me so hard that I actually fell for you.” I stared at the chrysanthemums on the porch. “In a week. A week. You just knew exactly what I needed to hear, and come to find out, you never cared.”

“I do care about you,” Owen said, stepping forward again.

I didn’t move away this time, but I didn’t meet his eyes either.

“Violet, I never meant for it to happen like this. I didn’t know… I didn’t know how much you meant to me until it was too late. I tried to stop it. I tried to figure out how to make it work for everyone.”

“I’ve always had a bad habit of falling for emotionally unavailable men, but this is far worse. You are far worse than any of that,” I whispered.

“What could I have done?” His eyes pleaded with mine, but I didn’t fall for it.

His charade would just make him sleep better at night.

“You could have told me the truth,” I said softly, my voice barely a whisper now. “You could have told me from the beginning.”

Owen’s face crumpled, and I saw the full weight of his guilt for the first time. “I should have,” he admitted. “I should have told you everything. But I didn’t know how. I didn’t want to lose you. I knew I signed an NDA. My partners…”

“You could have broken it.” Tears stung my eyes, and I quickly blinked them away.

“I wouldn’t just be losing the deal for myself. I’d be jeopardizing the deal for my partners, too.”

“Well, you’ve lost me now.”

He didn’t say anything for a long moment.

He just stood there. His eyes pleaded with me to understand, but I couldn’t.

I couldn’t understand how someone who claimed to care about me could betray me like this.

“I’m sorry,” Owen said finally, his voice hollow. “I’m so sorry, Violet.”

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