Page 86 of The True Love Experiment

“I know, but I’m the big sister and just left the wedding without saying goodbye to all my family.”

“You did say goodbye.”

“Not to everyone!”

He goes silent and I can’t look at his face. My thoughts are a flurry of broken trust and fear and anger and sadness. I feel nauseated and frantic, but I see from a distance, too, how this is unfolding. How wild I must look to him right now.

Connor’s voice is steady. “This is about what I just told you. I completely understand why this upsets you. But I need you to come back and talk this out with me.”

I trip as I shove my foot into a shoe. “I swear it isn’t about that.And I’m sure that was super hard for you to share. I’m sorry to do this right now, I just really should check to see if anyone is up that I need to spend time with.”

My card key is on the dresser and I grab it, shoving it into the pocket of my hoodie.

“Fizzy.Please stop.”

I take a deep breath and look at him. He’s sitting up, has pulled a sheet over his lap to cover himself. His hair is a disaster, eyes bright even in the dim room. He’s devastatingly gorgeous,

and I think I love him,

but I also think if someone can justify cheating once, they can justify it again. You’re either a cheater or you’re not.

“Fizzy. Come back.”

“I can’t.”

“Talk to me about what’s going on right now. I was a dumb kid. I’m not that guy anymore.”

“It’s fine. This isn’t about that.”

“It is. And it’s okay. I don’t like that I did it any more than you do, but I want us to be able to live with our fuckups. I want us to talk about them.”

I look away, at the ugly bamboo wallpaper, but I don’t even feel like I’m in the room with him anymore.

I’m in a crowded restaurant and Rob’s wife is glowering down at me. I’m aware of my confused date slowly putting the pieces together across the table from me. I’m home alone later, devastated to discover that I am the worst of things: a home-wrecker.

Before Rob, I thought I was bulletproof. I thought I’d always be enough for myself, that I didn’t need anyone, that no man couldtank my feelings or sense of self-worth. And then Rob and the whole situation made me question it all. I promised myself I would never feel that way again.

Now I see that Rob was a paper cut. Connor could obliterate me, and it wouldn’t take something as enormous as cheating.

I look over at him. “You want me to be honest?”

He nods immediately, forcefully. “Always.”

“Okay, well,” I say, clenching my jaw and grasping the first lie that comes to me. “I think we were both tipsy and then sex-drunk and we got way too heavy. I don’t know what I was thinking. We barely know each other.”

Connor gusts out a disbelieving breath. “Wedoknow each other. Getting to know each other has been oursingular focusformonths.”

The words fly out of me: “Then I was wrong about you. You’re not the man I thought you were.”

When he can’t come up with anything to say in response, I turn and leave.

thirty-sevenCONNOR

Istare at the door, waiting for the telltale sound of the key card, of Fizzy coming back in to regroup, find her level head, talk this out. But the hotel is so quiet this time of night, the only sound I hear is the elevator ding down the hall, and the mechanical sound of the car descending.

What the fuck just happened?

I fall back onto the bed, staring up at the ceiling. I know Fizzy to be a lot of things—wild, brave, self-assured, assertive, intense—but I don’t know her to be flighty like this. Fizzy is the heroine who turns around to face the oncoming danger head-on. She isn’t the one who throws out bollocks excuses on her way out the door. Now I’m alone and stark naked on this sex-ravaged bed with the echo of our sounds still embedded in the four walls.

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