Page 101 of Unravel Me

I’ve circledWildheart five times.Five goddamn times.

I’ve repeated my speech over and over, the same one I recited to Bear eight hundred times before I left the house, after making sure my hair looked nice and I was wearing my lucky T-shirt. My hands won’t stop shaking, and I tell myself my sweaty palms sliding against the steering wheel are the reason I miss the entrance to Wildheart a sixth time.

“Fuck.” I grip the steering wheel, softly banging my forehead against it. I should’ve done it a long time ago; maybe it would’ve knocked some sense into me.

But I can’t fuck around about this anymore, so when the light in front of me turns green, I turn into the parking lot at Wildheart Sanctuary and park myself in the same spot I always do, where I have a front row seat to Rosie puttering around in there, finishing the last of her paperwork, doing her final rounds in the cat den, showering them with love one last time before she says good-bye.

Unbuckling my seat belt, I stare down at my trembling hands before wiping them on my jeans, scrubbing one over my mouth, running the other through my hair before fixing my hat back on my head and, finally, getting out of the truck.

The two girls standing behind the desk lift their heads when I walk in, and a cat ambles up to me, dropping itself at my feet and showing me its belly. Silence falls over the room, and my shoulders pull taut as I stoop down, rubbing the cat’s belly.

“Is Rosie around? Can you tell her Adam’s here?”

The girls exchange a look, eyes bulging and heads tipping in my direction. The blonde clears her throat, turning to me. “Uh, Rosie’s not here.”

“She’s not?”

“She wasn’t feeling well. She went home early.”

Standing, I slip my fingers up the back of my hat, scratching my head. “Oh. Okay. Was she okay?”

“Ummm…” They look at each other again.

“Never mind. Thank you.” I give the cat one last pat before heading for the door, and when I’m halfway through it, their hushed words send my heart into overdrive.

“Oh my God. It reallyishim. Rosie’s dating Adam Lockwood.”

* * *

I’m not sure there’s a word to describe what I’m feeling now, bypassing the elevator and racing up all twelve flights to Rosie’s apartment. There are no nerves left, just sheer, unadulterated panic, and it spills out of me with the frantic rap of my knuckles against her door, the way I knock my hat clear off my head and yank at my curls while I wait for her to answer, to tell me I can make this right.

But it’s not Rosie who opens the door, and the narrowed gaze and crossed arms of the tattooed man waiting for me tell me I might be too late.

“Archie—”

“Oh, that’s interesting,” he bites out. “You know who I am, even though we’ve never met, yet you’ve been fucking around with my best friend for the last two months, and she hadno ideawho you were.”

“No, it’s not—it’s not like that.”

“Really? You didn’t lie to her about your job?”

“No, I—”Fuck. “I did. But I had a—”

“Good reason?” His brows rise. “Can’t wait to hear it.”

The door pulls away from him, and my sweet girl steps into view, pink waves piled on her head and grazing her neck, gaze trained on the hands she wrings at her stomach. When her name leaves my lips, it’s a desperate plea, drowning in the grief I feel rolling off her.

“Rosie.”

She looks at me then, stares up at me with those green eyes, impossibly wide and so wrecked, begging for it to make sense. Everything I want to say to her, everything I practiced when I was in control of this situation, it all dies somewhere in my throat.

I need to hug her. I need to feel her, need her to feel me. To feel how sorry I am, how deeply I care about her. How I’m not fucking going anywhere, because she’s been the one since she walked into my life. If I can just hug her, she’ll know. I’ll squeeze all of it into her, all the love I have.

But she crosses one arm over her stomach, grabbing onto her opposite elbow, and more than I see it, I can feel the wall she’s just erected between us.

“Here if you need me.” Archie presses a kiss to her temple before shooting me a castrating glare and disappearing.

Tears of betrayal swim in her guarded eyes, but the hopelessness might be worst of all. Eyes that shone with so much faith, so much warmth, are now shattered and muted. There’s a certain resignation to them, almost like she was waiting for something bad to happen, for the floor to fall through.

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