Page 2 of Fangs for the Memories
“I thought you loved him.”
“Still would have been a good idea to mention you thought he was an arse,” I snap. “Love or not.”
“You don’t love him?”
My tears dry. “No. Not afterthis, not after he’s managed to take my entire business and left me withnothing.” My voice rises to a fever pitch. “I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought maybe he lovedme.
Lucy hands me a glass of water. I shake my head, going to the dresser and drinking down the last of the flat champagne, straight from the bottle.
“The only person Mark ever loved was himself, Grace. I’m so sorry.” Lucy shakes her head and takes my hand, squeezing it.
It’s not fair to take any of this out on her. My stubbornness to see something through, my desire to please, my terrible taste in men.
“I’m going on the honeymoon, holiday…whatever,” I cough out, no longer caring about what’s on my face. “Going to Budapest was the only thing Mark actually cared about in this whole stupid wedding, so if I can deprive him of it, then I’ve won, haven’t I?”
Lucy stares at me as my robe comes undone and flaps open, revealing my stupidly tight wedding underwear designed to keep my curvy body in check. For a beat, neither of us does anything. Then the first laugh bubbles up within me and bursts out.
I’m pulled back into her bear hug until we’ve both laughed until we’re weak at the knees.
“You shouldn’t go alone,” Lucy says. “I can come with you.”
“For one, I’m going to be terrible company, and for the other, Mark’s name is on the ticket. I won’t be able to get it changed at short notice.”
Grace
Iput the last of my bags on the scales, and the airline operative winds a tag around the handle before handing me back my passport and boarding pass.
“Have a great flight, Miss Spencer,” he says.
I turn and stare directly into five pairs of eyes.
“You don’t need to do this on your own, Grace,” Kezia says, bristling with anger. “I’m sure we can find a way to get back at him.”
“Doing this will get back at him, the arsehole,” Lydia says with even more fierceness than Kezia, flicking her dark blonde hair over her shoulder.
She’s let me stay on her couch for the last week, fed me ice cream and let me stare at daytime telly until my eyes went square. She’s a trooper in a way I don’t know anyone else would have been.
“I need to get away,” I say rather pitifully. “Yes.” I hold a hand up at Lucy before she says anything. “This is all my fault, and yes, I’m going to pay for it big time, but I’d like to put a pin in it for two weeks while I work out what to do.”
Eliza slides her arm through mine, her big blue eyes filled with tears. “We’ll be here for you, Grace, you know we will. I’mso sorry this happened.” She looks so young, not even close to my thirty-three years on this earth, despite the fact we went to the same school.
“Don’t set her off,” Sophia admonishes Eliza as she takes my other arm. “I think you’re doing the right thing. This will piss Mark off something rotten,” she says in a conspiratorial whisper.
My friends come with me as I make my way through the busy airport to security. My phone buzzes in my bag, and I pull it out, showing the screen to them.
It’s HIM.
“He probably wants you to hand over the tickets so he and his fancy woman can do the trip instead of you,” Lydia growls.
Kezia snatches it from my hand before I can even protest, swiping across the screen to cancel the call and typing in my PIN number to open the phone.
“What are you doing?” I attempt to grab it back, but she holds it out of my reach, tapping on the screen.
“Something you should have done the second the rat texted you.” She gives me back the handset in triumph. “Consider him deleted from your life…and blocked. Permanently.”
If only it was so simple. I flick through the phone. Mark has most definitely been deleted, but then Kezia is a tech whizz, something which pissed him off to no end, given he was the original tech bro who thought he knew everything.
“You really don’t have to go,” Eliza says.
