Page 20 of Don’t Marry Him

“It’s crazy though, right?” I asked as I struggled to walk in his direction.

Michael was closer to the living room, and all I wanted to do was lie down on the couch.

“Of course it’s crazy. But it’s Trevor, so nothing surprises me. Absolutely nothing. Not when it comes to you. The guy hates you, Dom. He’s insanely jealous, and he always has been.”

I would never understand that. I’d never competed with Trevor for anything. If something meant that much to him, I always backed off. Dove was the only thing I hadn’t been willing to give up. And now, he had her. As hiswife.

My stomach threatened to lose it again, but I quickly lay down and brought my knees forward to try to calm it.

“Think Dove will ever forgive you?” Michael asked, and I wanted to fucking die.

He knew her as well as I did in certain ways. Like the fact that she could hold a grudge until the end of time and wasn’t quick to forgive when she felt slighted.

“Probably not,” I answered, like it even mattered. Nothing mattered anymore. “Are you ever going to get up?” I chastised my friend, knowing that he had to feel as shitty as I did.

His pain gave me the slightest sense of joy. See, I needed someone to feel as badly as I did. It made me feel less alone.

“I saw what happened to you when you got up. I’m not ever moving again.”

“Me neither. I live here now. On this couch. Forward my mail,” I said before closing my eyes as my head spun.

The next time I opened them, Michael was gone, and my phone was blacked out on the coffee table in front of me. I had no idea how long I’d been asleep for, no recollection of what day it was or the time. Fumbling around for a charger, I pulled the cord from underneath the couch and plugged my phone in.

Waiting the few minutes for it to fire up was torture, so I got up, grabbed the bottle of water that someone—assuming Michael—had left for me, and downed the whole thing in one gulp. I was definitely dehydrated. Heading toward the front door, where I’d tossed my cookies, I noticed that it was spotless. Michael was a damn good friend.

Filling up the bottle, I drank half of it before my stomach warned me to take it easy. I sat back down on the couch and grabbed my phone, turning it on. It buzzed in my hand, the date and time flashing, before it started ringing out notification after notification. My head spun as I did the math. I’d slept for over twenty-four hours straight, and I still felt like shit.

Missed calls, voice mails, and text messages beeped out. Unless they were from Dove, I couldn’t care less about any of them.

No one else mattered.

Scanning the alerts, I finally saw her name in a text bubble. I pressed on my Messages app, and her name taunted me from the very top of the list. Usually, that would mean that she was the last person to reach out, but I had her contact pinned to the top, so she was always in that position.

I opened it as fast as I could, and my eyes scanned the date first.

Yesterday.

She’d sent this message yesterday morning, and I was only seeing it now. My jaw ticced as I read her words.

I HATE YOU.

AND I’LL NEVER FORGIVE YOU.

Of course she hated me. She was someone else’s wife now, and I’d never forgive myself for letting that happen.

DEPRESSED AND ALONE

DOVE

Ioscillated between being so unbelievably sad to downright angry. My emotions swirled and mixed inside my head until it ached. My heart refused to believe that Dominic had abandoned me when I needed him most.

But it was the truth, and I had to keep reminding myself of it.

He hadn’t shown up. And I hadn’t heard from him since.

He’d read my text message. A full day after I’d sent it, I saw that it had finally been opened. I’d thought waiting for that notification had been torture, but not getting a response from him was even worse. I spent all day wondering what he was thinking and doing and questioning how he could stay away from me like I never mattered to him at all. It wasn’t like Dominic to be so reasonable when it came to me… to us.

I was sure he could be asking himself the same thing in regard to me, but I wasn’t the one who hadn’t followed through. I wasn’t the one who hadn’t shown up after asking me to and left him hanging ever since. We always fought for each other—always.

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