Page 88 of Heart of Stone
Nothing else mattered to me but her. The love she felt for me. The same that I felt for her.
“You love me?”
Her shoulders fell, the sadness etched into every feature on her beautiful face. “It doesn’t matter now.”
With that, she flung open the door and ran out.
And by the time I realized what was happening and tried to chase after her, Cole was there to stop me.
TWENTY-FIVE
Natalia
In the frigid weather as I raced across the property toward my cabin, my tears dried almost as soon as they fell.
My cabin.
It wouldn’t be mine for much longer.
This place. My home. Reid was going to destroy it.
I was breathing heavily, the result of running so fast to get away from him and the anger I felt. The betrayal. The despair.
How could he do this?
I ground my teeth together, hating myself for ever thinking it was wise to open my heart to someone, especially someone like Reid. He’d shown me who he was from the start. That was the real Reid. I’d convinced myself that it was the man he’d given me for the last month and a half that was the real deal.
But I was wrong.
So wrong.
Because, just like his friend had said, Reid had to pretend to care about what was going on here. God, I felt sick just thinking about it. Was it all a lie? Could I trust that anything thathappened between us was real? That he ever truly cared about me?
There were so many wonderful moments with him, instances that I wished I could bottle up and experience over and over for the first time. But had any of them meant the same to him as they did to me?
If I allowed myself to think back on them—when he cared for me after what Tim had done, the way he decorated the cabins with me, the stargazing at the firepit, the golf cart he’d put Christmas lights on—I wanted to believe in them. I didn’t want to admit that I’d been so desperate for love and attention that I clung to someone who could lie like that.
I needed to think.
I wanted to run, to hide, to give myself that time to deliberate on everything.
But I had nowhere to go.
Sure, I could get in my car and drive. But there was no place I felt safe.
And at that realization, I wondered what I was going to do when Reid followed through on his plan to tear down this retreat and take away the only place that felt like home since my parents died.
I’d have no home.
I made it to my cabin, climbed the stairs, and pushed through the front door. For the next ten minutes, I paced the room trying to figure out what to do. But I got no answers, because I kept hearing those words over and over in my head.
He pretended.
He pretended.
Hepretended.
I fell in love with a man who pretended to care about this place.
