Page 67 of Picture Perfect

Stop thinking about her. She hates you.

Clicking off the light, all I see are shadows in the dark gray of my room. The moon shines in through the window, just a sliver this time of the month. Just enough light to imagine of the shadows could be Autumn. But the icy bed remains polar because I am truly alone.

Even now, I cannot wrap my mind around what happened tonight. She really broke things off between us. I’m not sure if it’s just the sex or our friendship too, but it feels like both. It feels like a dagger in my chest right now. Hard to breathe, actually.

Her words ring in my head. “Fuck off, Rowan. We’re done. I never want to see you again.”

Shockdoes not feel adequate. Her words were as mind-blowing as any orgasm I ever had with her. In fact, they were the exact opposite of an orgasm. It was not supposed to end like this.

It was not supposed to end at all.

She blindsided me with this. When she left my office, I just stood there for a good five minutes like an idiot. I had no words. No thoughts, aside from, “What the fuck was that?”

But the worst part is, she didn’t actually blindside me with any of this. I wanted to pretend things were fine. She was just busy.That’swhy she hadn’t called me. A preoccupied career girl, that one. Emotions weren’t involved. She wasn’t upset or unhappy with how things had been progressing.

Not that thingswereprogressing. But that was by design, wasn’t it? Isn’t that the beauty of the friends with benefits arrangement?

Fuck, I am not that naïve. I had my doubts from the start about all of this, and now, I am in the thick of the consequences I had feared. This was coming from day one, and I went ahead with it, anyway. Glaring at the ceiling, I’m frustrated.

I made this cold bed and now I get to lie in it.

Somehow, the walls feel closer than ever. My only companions closing in on me. Loneliness pins me to the bed, and I don’t know how to escape it. I’d fooled myself into thinking Autumn was a distraction from the loneliness but she was actually the cure.

I’d been a fool for so long, not telling her what she means to me, and now she’s gone. I don’t want to think the words. They are a cursed cliché. But I can’t help myself.

The one that got away.

The phrase carries more weight than I want it to, and the words seem to push me further into the mattress. There is no part of me that does not long for Autumn Sherwood. From my skin to my bones, I want her so badly it makes me dizzy. My longing had not been enough to make me sack up and tell her what I felt.

Fear kept my jaw tight.

What if I’d opened up and told her I wanted more than a casual arrangement? More than just sex? That I thought about her all day? That the sound of her laugh makes my heart lighter? What if I told her that the thought of growing old with her is the only thing that makes the moments without her tolerable?

What if I’d grown a set?

And now, the fear of putting myself out there cost me exactly what I wanted. In my mind, my loneliness had a new competitor for the right to kick my ass, and that competitor was self-loathing. While they beat me up in my head, something else comes to mind.

I am not taking this lying down.

This is just like when I struggled with organic chemistry. I could take the poor grade, or I could double-down on the work.

I have to make this right. Cargills do not take no for an answer. Not in life. And I have to show her the life I want for us. A real life, public. Together. No more secret trysts, no more hiding what we are together.

We can be a proper couple. She was jealous of Ally. I knew it when we argued and I know it now. She wants me as much as I want her.

I have to prove to her I will be her man, always. I am not Mark. The thing with Ally isn’t even a thing, but Autumn doesn’t know that. I’ll show her. If she wants me, I am hers. I will fight for her. For this. Our future together.

Somehow.

I sit up, legs over the edge of the bed. The room feels even emptier, because now I can see that I’m alone. I rack my brain, trying to think of how to fix the mess I’ve made. But nothing is coming. No ideas, no clever gambits.

I’m a lawyer, for God’s sake, and I’m out of solutions? I argue for a fucking living, and she left me speechless!

Resting my head in my hands, the weight of my pigheadedness threatens to crush me. Vacillating between waves of anger for the entire situation and eruptions of, “What the fuck do I do now?,” I am lost.

I could have said no from the start. Could have said it was a onetime thing. Made a no-kissing rule. Stopped myself from fantasizing about a future with Autumn. But from the moment we touched in that forbidden, not-platonic way, I couldn’t have done any of that.

I was helpless to it all, and I have to stop lying to myself.

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