Page 134 of The Bad Wedding Date

“What did you do to Jonah, Fraser?” I forced myself to ask.

“You have to know I’d never hurt—”

“Just tell me!” I snapped.

Fraser swallowed. “We knew he wouldn’t back out of the wedding quietly, so Ray drugged him.”

“What?” I mouthed, unable to make any sound.

“He took him back to our apartment in Soho. We kept him there until it was over.”

His clipped sentences and matter-of-fact tone may as well have been several spears to my heart. The bubble around me burst wide open, exposing me to icy chills and dangerous terrain that would freeze my heart over instantly and let a crack run through it that rattled me to my bones.

Goosebumps prickled my skin, turning me cold on a warm summer’s day.

I couldn’t breathe.

I couldn’t move.

I couldn’t look at the man in front of me for a second longer.

He looked like home, but he’d just become as foreign to me as someone from the other side of the world.

I didn’t know him.

I never had.

“Charlotte, please…” He reached over, letting his hand fall to my thigh, and I instantly shrugged it off.

“Get off me!” I cried, not recognising the hysteria in my own voice. “Don’t you touch me!”

Pain lanced across his face in an instant, making him look like a sweet and innocent puppy I’d just kicked in the stomach.

“Is that what you’d have done to me if I hadn’t complied, Fraser? Fuckingdruggedand kidnapped me?”

“Jesus, Charlotte. No. Never. You know that.”

But I knew better than to let him fool me with that again. I’d been fooled by it for the past two weeks. I’d let him suck me in, and all at the expense of my best friend. Everything made sense now. Jonah’s silence. His mood swings. His time off work. His lack of phone calls and texts.

Another thought crossed my mind, and I stared at the man in front of me.

“What did you do to make him stay quiet, Fraser, huh? What threats did you make to his life? Because I told Jonah everything about you just the other day, and there’s no way he’d stay quiet about what you’d done to him and let you stay in my life unless you’d threatened him. That’s not who Jonah is.”

Fraser closed his eyes again, regret flooding his features.

“You can’t even tell me, can you?”

He shook his head, not looking at me, which came as a relief as I grappled for the door handle behind me. My hands shook violently, and I wasn’t too convinced that my legs would carry me once I tried to use them, but I opened that door and scrambled out of that car as fast as I could anyway.

“Charlotte, wait. Don’t do this, please!” he called, leaning forward, ducking his head so I could see him when I stood outside the car. “Let me get you home safely.”

Using the last scrap of strength I had within me, I met his gaze, holding onto the door for stability in case my knees decided to give out on me.

“I really don’t need another thing more from a man like you. Not your lies, not your false promises, not your omissions of truth, and not your stupid protection. You go out there and pretend you’re saving the world, Fraser if that’s what makes you feel good, but let me tell you something:you’rethe one women need protecting from. You’re the worst kind of man, the one who makes someone feel something for a person that doesn’t even exist. You must be out of your mind to think I’d spend another second by your side after what you’ve done to Jonah. Whatever this was, whatever we were… it’s over. Do not come looking for me. I don’t want to be found.”

I slammed the door on the most perfect face and man I’d ever known, and I walked away with a shattered heart, realising that everything I’d ever thought had been real had only ever been a lie.

Fiction.

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