Page 98 of The Truth About Love

So tonight, I’ll go to him.

I’ll show up at his apartment and open the door to our new life. And in the morning, I’ll wake up in the place I’ve been dreaming of for the last two years, his arms.

And finally, we’ll be happy. Finally, we’ll be together.

Finally, I’ll be home.

***

This is it.

I let out a hot breath as my palms sweat and my heart thuds wildly in my chest.

God,I don’t think I’ve ever been so nervous.

The apartment building my sister told me he lives in now looms over me, twenty floors of and reinforced concrete and glittering glass windows. It’s one of the most sought-after buildings in the city to live in. I know, because I tried to rent an apartment of my own here when I first moved to the city years ago.

Auden must have done well for himself in the time that I’ve been away to land a place here and be able to afford it. My heart swells with pride for him.

I know nothing of his life over the last two years. We haven’t had any contact since he dropped me off at the rehab facility in Tampa with whispered words of love and soft kisses to my lips and forehead.

We thought it would be better that way. Knowing that the next time we spoke would be the first day of the rest of our lives. Texting would have only cheapened our experience when what we were going through was so intense. And sure, we could have written letters, but I kind of loved knowing how much we would have to talk about when our day finally came.

And here it is.

I can hardly believe it.

I walk straight past the doorman to the elevator and tap the button for the fifteenth floor. With every rising number I see on the indicator, I get a little bit sicker with nervous energy. It feels like an age has passed when the elevator bell finally dings and the doors open.

With tentative steps, I walk down the brightly lit hallway to the door embossed with the number I was told belongs to Auden.

My stomach flips. This is it. I’m so nervous, so overwhelmingly excited, that adrenaline courses like neon liquid through my veins and sets my body aglow. I’m vibrating with the anticipation and I can’t wait a second more.

I raise my fist to the door and knock.

There’s a shuffling inside followed by the clip-clop of footsteps, like high heels on hardwood floors.

“Just a sec.”

The voice is acutely feminine, but my brain hardly has a chance to register the significance of that fact before the door is swinging open and I find myself staring into a pair of familiar eyes.

But they’re not the eyes I’ve been dreaming of for so long.

Instead of a brilliant blue, they’re deep brown. They’re not wide with happiness at the sight of me, but narrowed in hostility.

Because it isn’t Auden standing there with open arms ready to welcome me home, it’s Cara with hatred on her face and a sparkling diamond on her finger.

Herringfinger.

I turn on my heel and run, white hot pain searing through me like lava, burning me alive from the inside out. All the ways I imagined this moment could go, his ex-girlfriend opening the door was not one of them.

Only, it doesn’t look like she’s his ex-girlfriend anymore.

It looks unmistakably and irrevocably like she’s his wife.

Chapter Twenty-six

Auden

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