Page 36 of False Start
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to have dessert. I’d hate to sacrifice my figure for a piece of pie.”
Tears burned at the back of my eyes. Screw them all. I didn’t bother to see if Weston followed me out of the house, just stalked right on through, without even acknowledging the whine of query Bessie gave me as I stomped past.
It was time for me to grow up.
I’d relied on Weston too much recently and had gotten used to having someone in my corner, but he’d get bored with me sooner rather than later. Witnessing Cian and Blair together as a united front had broken something inside of me.
“Georgie,” Weston called, jogging down the front walk toward me. “Wait up. Are you okay?”
“I couldn’t stay there any longer. They’re just awful.”
A car rolled by slowly, the crunch of tires against gravel loud in the twilight. In the distance, crickets chirped as a cool breeze swept through the space between us.
“I think Cian had the right idea with the no contact thing,” he said, closing the distance to wrap his arms around me. I stepped out of reach before he could make contact.
“No, you don’t get it. That means I have to deal with them on my own. No distractions.” I paced away from him, trying to wrangle the runaway train of my catastrophic thoughts.
“I’m trapped. Duckie gets to live her perfect life with her perfect boyfriend while I get stuck here.”
“I wish you wouldn’t call her Duckie. It’s not like you to be so unkind.”
“It’s exactly like me. Don’t pretend you know me, Weston. Just because we pretended to date for a while and shared a few orgasms doesn’t mean you know anything about me.”
Why couldn’t I shut up? The words poured out of me like poison. My insecurity not just pushing him away, but using an old cannon to launch him into space to ensure maximum fallout.
“Georgia—”
“Don’t Georgia me. We said we’d come to a mutual decision when it was best to stop this fake relationship, and I think that time is now. Have a nice life, Weston. I hope I made a good story for you to tell someday when you want a real girlfriend again.”
I squared my shoulders and turned away, making it halfway to the neighbor’s driveway before I realized I’d made a significant tactical error.
Stalking back toward him, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and searched our return flight for the following day.
“We still need to fly home. I’m sure I can move my seat away from you when we change our flights.”
The airport had room on a flight two hours later, and I chose a seat in economy to ensure maximum separation from Weston and his beautiful life.
I needed to get used to my place again, anyway.
Weston
We were gettingour asses kicked.
The Dakota Dragons had come to play today. Their silver and navy jerseys looked extra shiny, their defensive line impenetrable. But even if they had shown up to our turf in flip flops and half injured, they’d still be ahead. Our team wasn’t gelling today. Every play felt clunky, and the one field goal we’d attempted had come off Jeffries’s boot wrong and gone wide.
I felt like my mood had infected the team, and the Dragons had never been a team to let their opposition’s weakness slide.
I jogged off the field, passing our defensive line on their way out, and knocked fists with Dawson, our linebacker.
He slapped my back as he continued onto the field, clapping his hands to rally the team.
Don’t do it.
I glanced toward the field level suite where Cami and Marina sat watching us bomb the game. I could almost feel their disappointment in us from here. The seat beside Cami was glaringly empty, like it had been the week before, after our return from the disastrous Thanksgiving dinner inTexas. Despite having replayed the conversation in her parents’ driveway over in my head to the point of insanity, I still couldn’t see how it had all gone wrong.
It was obvious to me that Georgia’s parents were toxic as fuck. They’d clearly played their daughters against each other for years. Blair honestly seemed cool, and I’d looked Cian up after I got home and couldn’t get out of my own head. He was a well-respected player with a reputation of having a cool head on the ice. I could respect that.
It hurt my heart to think that Georgia was so used to being under attack in her own home that everyone had become the enemy.
