Page 106 of The Truth About Love

“And no, Summer, going back to what you said before, you haven’t led me on.” He rolls his eyes. “I’m under no illusion that this is anything more than a dinner between friends, despite how much I enjoy flirting with you. But regardless, I care about you and I hate to see you so destroyed by this. So, you’re going to go to that dinner party with me by your side and your head held high, and we will eat their food and drink their wine and make fun of them at every opportunity. And if you need to, you can spend another two weeks in the dark afterwards. But if you want any chance of moving on, then you need to face them. Trust me, okay?”

I nod mutely.

I get what he’s saying. I understand where he’s coming from. But I’m not sure I’ll get the closure he thinks I will by sitting in Auden’s home as I watch him with his wife and their friends.

It’s easier to pretend it’s not real when I don’t have to see them together. I can just go about my life, pretending that he’s still waiting for me to show up at his door someday.

But maybe Max is right.

I won’t be able to move on until I’ve faced my new reality. That’s how grief works, right? You work through the stages until one day, you finally reach acceptance.

I’m not sure I’ll ever get there, that I’ll ever accept that Auden’s heart doesn’t belong to me anymore and never will again, but I have no chance if I keep allowing myself to live in a fantasy world and pretending that none of this ever happened.

I need to see for myself that he’s happy without me, that his betrayal wasn’t in vain. God, it’s going to kill me, to see Cara live the life I thought would be mine. To watch her touch Auden and kiss him and love him the way I ache to do.

But I need to.

If I want any hope of rebuilding a future for myself, then it’s what I have to do.

And maybe then, after all these years, I’ll finally let him go.

Chapter Twenty-eight

Auden

I’ve never hated a person more than the man currently sitting opposite me with his arm wrapped around the back of Summer-Raine’s chair.

My eyes zero in on the movement of his fingers as they toy with the golden strands of her hair and it makes me murderous.

Mine.

That’s the word screaming in my head repeatedly like a siren.

Mine. Mine. Mine.

My hands are clenched into tight fists underneath the table. There is so much rage coursing through me that I don’t dare reach for my wine, for fear that I’ll shatter the glass with the strength of my grip. And all because he’s touching what doesn’t belong to him.

But… she doesn’t belong to me either.

That fact only serves to make me more furious, more violently jealous.

He knows it too, the man who’s touching her. He knows what it’s doing to me. I see him watching me through the furthest corner of his eye as he laughs at a story Fred, my best friend since high school, is telling. I see the way his lips twitch smugly every time I flinch or flare my nostrils.

Fuck, I hate him.

I can’t help thinking that his stupid face would look better if I stuffed it into the silver-plated gravy boat Cara and I were given as a wedding gift.

I’ve never really had violent tendencies. As a teenager, I’d channel any anger I felt into playing football. But even when I gave up playing after college and lost that outlet, I didn’t experience any bursts of aggression like I am right now.

It’s just that the sight of him touching her, even though it’s just her hair, is too much for me to deal with. It makes me wonder if he’s touched her anywhere else. If he’s touched her in the places that were supposed to only ever be touched by me.

Two weeks ago, she showed up at my door. Has she really gotten over me in that time? Has she really moved on with this smirking, arrogant asshole who looks like a member of a One Direction tribute band?

If she has, I think I’ll kill him. And I don’t mean figuratively.

The thought of wrapping my hands around his neck and choking the life out of him is almost as exhilarating as the thought of divorcing Cara.

Speak of the devil, my wife lays her hand on my wrist and digs her impossibly sharp nails into my skin. I curse. Witch made me bleed.

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