Page 62 of Love is Fake

“Honey, we need to talk,” Lennox calls after her, but she’s already half-way up the stairs. She can move surprisingly fast in those vertiginous heels. Another way she’s completely different to me, I notice.

“I know, we need to set a date and start thinking about a guest list, I’m so excited!” Honey claps her hands together like a little kid and my eyes zero in on the huge rock on her ring finger.

It’s not the size of the diamond that makes my knees go to Jell-o, it’s the thought of Lennox going down on one knee and giving it toher.

I’ve been fooling myself this whole time. I let myself believe in the damn fairy tale even though I knew better.

I’ve always known happily ever after doesn’t exist outside of Disney movies, but somewhere along the way of falling in love with Lennox, I must have forgotten that.

And holy crap, she’s talking about theirwedding. This is actually happening, it’s not a nightmare and no amount of pinching myself is going to get me out of this seventh circle of hell.

“Nox?” I look up at him in confusion, willing him to tell me something to make all this make some kind of sense. Like, I don’t know, he had temporary amnesia or this is some kind of prank or… I don’t know, the wrong dimension spun itself on its ass and landed at our feet.

He looks between me and – fuck - his fiancée, conflicted about what to do before he steps in the direction she’s gone.

He’s chosen her.

“Just, wait here, don’t go anywhere, okay? I need to straighten this shit out.” He doesn’t wait for me to reply before rushing off, probably to placate the woman he’s apparently engaged to.

What. The. Actual. Fuck.

For a full minute I stand there, frozen to the spot, unable to compute what I’ve just seen. When my brain starts functioning again, the only thing I can think is how much I need to get out of here. On auto-pilot, I tap my phone a few times, ordering an Uber because there’s no way I’m driving Lennox’s truck anymore. I don’t want anything of his.

I get flashes of conversations I’ve overheard, scraps between Lennox and Declan, between him and Kai and I realizethisis what they were talking about. Everyone knew about it, everyone apart from me. Part of me wonders if they’ve all been laughing at my naivete behind my back. I’d like to think Kai wouldn’t, that at least one of the relationships I’ve had in this house has been real.

Vaguely I’m aware of a uniformed man, laden with matching designer suitcases walking through the front door and grumbling to himself as he starts to struggle up the stairs with them.

It looks like she’s moving in. Permanently. And, of course, why wouldn’t she be? This is going to be her home when she marries Lennox.

The thought causes a bubble of hysterical laughter I swallow down before it turns into the real emotion I’m feeling, the bone-deep misery I don’t think I’ve ever experienced before, not even when my dad sat me down when I was old enough and explained the woman who gave birth to me had left us because ‘she didn’t want to be a mom’.

It almost feels like history is repeating itself. Lennox said he didn’t want to get married, he wasn’t into the institution. But perhaps what he was really trying to say is that he just didn’t want to marryme.

I’m not sure how long I stand there for before I decide to get the hell out of dodge. I can meet the Uber at the front gates. I don’t need to wait around in the entrance hall and watch what I thought was happiness crumble around me.

I’m almost at the door when Lennox’s unmistakable step hits the stairs.

“Isabella, wait!”

Like the fool that I am, I do and it’s not just because it’s damn hard to walk away from him; it’s because I feel like I deserve to have some freakin’ answers!

“Where are you going?” That alarmed look I’m so unused to seeing on him makes a reappearance. Lennox is always in control and full of confidence, but right now he seems anything but.

“Anywhere!” I burst out. “Anywhere that’s far away from here!”

“Don’t leave, for Chrissakes, not before we’ve talked about this!”

As I look at him, the scraps of our conversations start to come together. Puzzle pieces make their way into recognizable pictures.

“Of course you wouldn’t have told your family about me.” I shake my head at myself, wondering how I could have been sonaïve. “You couldn’t tell them you were with me when you were engaged to someone else.”

The word ‘engaged’ is like a dagger twisting in my stomach.

Whatever I thoughtwewere, clearly I was wrong beyond belief. There was never an ‘us’, there was only him and me and now there is just me again.

“What was I? Just someone to pass the time with, while you waited forherto come back?” The thought makes me sick to my stomach. “I may not be what you want, but I deserve to be treated with more respect than that.”

“Iz, would you just calm down and let me explain?” Lennox growls, which just makes me angrier because everyone knows the worst thing you can possibly tell someone who is pissed beyond belief is to ‘calm down’.

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