Page 142 of The Bad Wedding Date

Most nights, I dreamed of him. Most mornings, I woke with tears on my pillow like some pitiful heroine or lady that one of those damn dukes had ruined. Most days, I put on a brave face, telling Jonah and my father—who I’d unexpectedly become closer to—that everything was fine. I felt fine. The world itself couldn’t be any finer.

Lies. Every word was a lie.

They didn’t need to know that the colours had faded away, leaving everything in sepia tones since the night I sent Fraser away, begging him to go. After that, I hadn’t heard from him again—both a gift and a curse I couldn’t force out of my mind. Although, call it paranoia, wishful thinking, or hope… I swore that sometimes I couldfeelhim nearby. Sometimes, just before I woke up, I swore I could still feel his hands upon my skin—his mouth on my neck and the way he pulled my back against his chest and breathed softly into my hair.

In the quiet of my apartment, I sometimes imagined I heard him whispering the word ‘baby’ in my ear with a smile on his face and a twinkle in his eyes.

I had to shut those thoughts and ridiculous notions down quickly to stop myself from becoming the very thing I hated: pathetic.

Jonah and I got back to our old ways quickly enough, calling and texting each other as much as possible. I still held so much guilt over everything that had happened to him, and he still tried to make me see that life had to go on. Shit happened. I couldn’t live in that past anymore, no matter how recent it seemed. I loved him for that most days, but on the days that I wanted him to blame me so that the feeling inside my chest served a purpose, he irritated me for being so reasonable about the whole affair.

The air had turned cooler that particular day when I walked into work, unwrapping my thin scarf from around my neck and hanging it up in the staff room of the care home before I did the same with my thin jacket.

“Trouble has arrived,” Jean said when she walked in the door behind me, wearing the usual purple nylon uniform that hung like a potato sack from each of our bodies.

I turned to her and offered a small smile, and she stopped in her tracks, holding her clipboard in her hand with her head tilted to one side.

“Trouble has arrived, but the genuine smile is still elusive, I see,” she added.

Forcing my mouth to rise higher, I rolled my eyes. “Don’t you start. I have enough to contend with when Cecile starts on me.”

“Consider me the warmup act.” Dropping her clipboard onto the small, cheap as hell table in the staff room, she rested her arse on the edge of it and crossed her arms to study me. “You know if you can’t handle me in here, going out there to Cecile will destroy you.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I pulled my lanyard out of my pocket and draped it over my neck, aiming for disinterest. “I’m just here to work, Jean.”

“Something you’ve always been so good at up until lately.”

At that, my head snapped up, and any trace of false smiles faded away instantly. The last thing I wanted was for my manager to think my performance had deteriorated. I’d done my absolute best to not let anyone know anything had changed in my life, good or bad. Nobody except Jonah, at least, and no way would he have shared anything about my time with Fraser with anyone else in this building…

Would he?

I shook out the doubt and stared at Jean. “Have I done something wrong?”

“Not exactly.” She looked down at her feet before her eyes found mine again, and she blew out a breath. “I don’t make a habit of involving myself in staff’s personal affairs. I have enough going on in my own life to get involved in everyone else’s, but there’s something about you, Charlotte, and here I am, getting involved anyway.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Have you turned up for work every day, on time, and done your job? Absolutely.” She raised her brows. “But have you turned up for work every day, on time, and done your job with the usual spark and flair we’ve all come to know and love from you? No.” She shook her head. “No.”

My hands found the lanyard hanging between my chest just for something to fiddle with. “I didn’t realise we were in a circus and that I had to entertain the masses.”

“You don’t.” She shot me a look. “But you could leave the edgy sarcasm and pessimism at the door on your way in.”

“My pessimism?”

Pushing up to her feet, she walked over to me, reaching out to grab the tops of my arms. “In the last two months, I’ve heard nothing but negativity from you. Even with Cecile, the woman you used to love to go back and forth with, your fuse is short. The residents used to look forward to you being on duty, and if they knew you were in the lounge waiting to serve them their dinner, there’d be a queue a mile long down the corridor as they battled it out to be the first to get your attention.”

I swallowed down the guilt that rose inside of me. More guilt. More mistakes. More errors of judgement.

“Now, they’re on edge, slipping past you in the hallway, wondering what mood you’re going to be in that day. Something has happened to you,” Jean said, her voice sympathetic. “I can see it in your eyes and in the way Jonah keeps pulling you aside to hold your hand and whisper something in your ear that makes you lift your chin and carry on.”

“Jean, I—”

“I’m not here to pry,” she said, cutting me off. “Like I said, your business isn’t my business, not unless you want it to be. You’re young—I’ve been there myself a long time ago—and a lot of life’s hardest lessons come to us during that stage of life. Whatever or whoever happened to you to take that sparkle out of your eyes, I want you to know that time will help you forget them. It will. It always does. And if you can’t forget them or it completely, the memories will at least fade, and they won’t sting as much as they do now.”

I stared up at her, my breaths getting heavier as I willed myself not to cry. Not to think about the way Fraser’s body felt wrapped around mine, or the sad, desperate look in his eyes when he realised I’d chosen Jonah—the man I’d known for years—over him; the man I’d only known for weeks. The look in his eyes when that door closed between us for the final time.

Take care, baby.

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