Page 64 of My Last Dance

I couldn’t.

I needed to get myself out of there before I broke down in sobs in front of the whole bar, which would just make the whole situation worse.

With my heart lodged in my throat, I stalked out of the bathroom and power-walked to the exit for my coat.

I only made it about ten steps out onto the snowy sludge-covered sidewalks before I heard him behind me.

“Whoa, whoa, wait, where are you going?”

I came to a halt. The streetlights blurred in front of me. I blinked rapidly to clear my stupid eyes, because I would not give him the satisfaction of seeing me cry.

“What’s wrong?” he whispered behind me.

Steeling my spine, I turned to face him and almost crumbled.You. It was supposed to be you,my heart cried. This hurt. It hurt so fucking bad.

His breath hung in the cold air while snowflakes clung to his hair. “Piper, what’s wrong?” he repeated.

Swallowing down the pain, I forced out, “Nothing, Richard.”

His eyebrows slammed down. “Why are you mad?”

“I’m always mad.”

He smirked like I was playing around.

And that hurt worse. I was done playing. We were stuck going round and round in this toxic cycle. But I needed to get off this rollercoaster ride and never get back on. My hands went to my temples because it felt like my head was about to fly off.

“This is so stupid.” My voice broke. “I can’t do this anymore.”

He took a step closer, but I held up a hand to stop him.

“I can’t.”

“Can’t what?” he asked, clearly confused and at a loss.

“I can’t be sitting here waiting for you, hoping it’s our time.” My throat burned. “I turn guys down, ya know?” My chin quivered. I tried so hard to mask up, to hide my hurt, but it felt impossible with him. “I turned them down because I was hoping foryou. I was waiting foryou.” My breath hitched. “But you’re not waiting forme, are you?”

“Piper.” His face fell. “I didn’t ask you to wait for me.”

Those words felt like a slap to the face.

Because…didn’t he?He’d been dropping clues since we were fifteen years old. And I ate them all up. Did he not realize how muchall those little clues meant to me? But maybe they weren’t a big deal to him, maybe this was all a game to him.

And that hurt. It hurt my heart so fucking bad.

He jerked his chin to the door. “C’mon, it’s cold, we can talk inside.”

Yeah, it was cold. It was freezing, and I could no longer feel my hands or my face. It was a damn shame the cold couldn’t numb my heart because it was cracking right in half.

I was realizing then, with soul-crushing disappointment, that everything I ever thought about him, about us, was built on delusion, just a cute mental dreamhouse I’d been carefully constructing for years. Now it was all crumbling down around me.

“We never…” He was at a loss for words. “I never said…We didn’t…” His warm breath hung in the air.

He could try to deny it all day, but I knew the words he spoke to me. I memorized them and replayed them way too often for him to try to erase them from existence.

There was no holding my tears back anymore. “Fuck off, Richard.”

“I’m sorry.” His hands flew to his head, and he fisted his hair in frustration. “Please come back, let’s talk this out.”

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