Total pages in book: 24
Estimated words: 22495 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 112(@200wpm)___ 90(@250wpm)___ 75(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 22495 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 112(@200wpm)___ 90(@250wpm)___ 75(@300wpm)
Her heart stopped.
"I'm sorry for all the years I never put you first. You have always been everything to me, but I made you feel the opposite. Come back to me. Please. Give me the chance to be the husband—"
"I can't," she choked out in a sob.
He whitened.
"I'm sorry, Troy, but I can't..."
And she was already crying as she pulled the sheet up to her chest, already crying as she reached for his phone on the nightstand, and she just had to type her name—
Laina Barrymore.
All the videos that came up were from the ambush interview. The one outside her school, on the day everything had gone wrong. The day she had lost her mind.
She hit play. Turned the screen toward him.
And there she was, mascara streaked, hair wild, surrounded by reporters shoving microphones into her face, and the words coming out of her mouth—
"We're divorcing."
Troy stared at the screen.
On the video, Laina watched herself unravel. She remembered this moment. She remembered the panic rising in her throat, the cameras flashing, the questions piling on top of each other, and the desperate need to say something, anything, that would make them stop.
And she had found herself saying all sorts of things just to keep herself from becoming a fool on national television.
"I've...I've found someone else."
She heard her own breath catch on the lie, even on camera. Saw the blush flood her own face. And she remembered the instant regret, the horror of hearing those words come out of her mouth and knowing she couldn't take them back.
But it got worse. Because on the video, she had turned around to walk away from the reporters, and standing right behind her was Oscar Baldwin, who had completely misunderstood everything.
"Is that why Mr. Barrymore seemed jealous of me?" Oscar's voice was earnest, confused, almost flattered. "Did he think I stole her away from him?"
Laina stopped the video.
The screen went dark. The room went quiet. And the only sound was Troy's breathing, which had gone very, very still.
She couldn't look at him.
"The whole world saw that, Troy." Her voice was barely a whisper. "They think I left you for another man. They think Oscar and I—"
She couldn't finish.
Because the silence beside her was the kind that could break a marriage all over again.
Chapter Six
DON'T CRY, DON'T CRY.
Laina repeated the words to herself as she watched her husband slowly pull away, and with every added inch that separated the two of them, it was like the sun also fading from her world.
His body left a cold space where warmth had been. The sheets were still tangled from what they'd done, still warm from his skin, and she could still feel the ghost of his hands on her waist and his mouth on her throat, but he was pulling away, and the distance between them was growing, and she couldn't breathe.
His handsome face was a complete blank, and it hurt because she knew now...
That he truly loved her, and it was why, even though it was Laina who had hurt him—
He was careful not to hurt her back by letting her see just how much she...
After all those things she had said in a moment of insanity...
Don't cry, Laina.
Because tears weren't something she had earned right now. Not when she was the one who had completely messed up. While Troy...
He had changed back into his clothes, and she could only swallow hard. He stood by the side of the bed with his shirt untucked and his jaw tight and his dark eyes fixed on a point somewhere past her shoulder, because he couldn't look at her. Or wouldn't. And either way, it felt like a blade between her ribs.
He looked so, so beautiful in her eyes. It actually reminded her of the first time she had seen him. Seven years ago. When things were so much simpler, and he was just a man she had met at a hockey game and accidentally spilled her nachos on.
A man whose face she had memorized in the first five seconds. The sharp line of his jaw. The way his shoulders made everything around him look smaller. The dark eyes that had looked at her — at her, nachos and all — like she was the most interesting thing he'd ever seen.
But now those same eyes were looking at the wall, and his hands were at his sides, and the knuckles on his right hand were white.
"I need some time."
The quietness of his voice hurt so, so much because this was her husband once again trying to protect her...even though she was the one who had destroyed their marriage in an interview that was now being broadcast on every sports channel and uploaded countless times across all social media platforms.
"To process things..."
Laina whispered "okay" with a nod. Her voice came out thin and small, and she hated the sound of it, hated how tiny she had made herself, sitting in the middle of their bed with the sheet pulled up to her chin like a shield that couldn't shield anything.