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“Hey, aren’t you?” Brad interrupted, looking at Leo. I cut him off. That was the last thing we needed in this already horrific situation.
“What is it?” I barked at her.
Scarlet tapped Brad’s shoulder, getting his attention back. I didn’t want to be a part of whatever this was, but I also didn’t need these two blowing Leo’s cover.
“We didn’t want to tell you like this,” she said. The “we” stuck its claws into my heart and shredded what I thought had already been annihilated. I hated that I could still feel burning pain from the two of them.
“Tell me what?” I asked, just wanting to get on with it.
Scarlet reached into her bag and pulled out something. She slipped it on her hand. The size of the diamond almost blinded me, and vomit bubbled in my throat as my stomach dropped. I was taken back to that rollercoaster Brad and I rode on one of our first getaway trips, but this time, he wasn’t holding my hand to soothe me. He was holding her hand now. Her hand that was adorned by the diamond I had once thought would belong to me.
“I see,” I said. And I did. But I also didn’t. Because an affair was one thing. This, well, this was something else. Something real. Something that made me realize I was never real to them at all.
I shoved past Scarlet, who shouted after me. I turned around to see Leo tossing cash on the table and pushing past Brad, following me. I turned back around and kept crutching out of the place as fast as I could. Thankfully, I’d had more practice getting around and was somewhat faster. It still wasn’t fast enough, though.
I didn’t stop until the diner was in the distance, until I was on the boardwalk in the middle of a sea of people. Lost. Swallowed up. Gone.
I inhaled deeply, shoving down the tears that swirled about. I tilted my chin up toward the sky, needing to breathe in the salty air to remember I still could.
“Tillie, I’m sorry,” Leo said, a hand softly touching my shoulder.
“You don’t have anything to be sorry for. They do,” I said, looking at him instead of the sky. He wrapped his arms around me. The second hug in one day. It didn’t feel awkward, though. It felt like everything I needed as I leaned into him, inhaling his oaky cologne and letting the tears cascade down.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Are you sure you’re okay? I hate dropping you off after everything,” Leo said, helping me to the door of the condo. We’d spent the early afternoon hours on a bench people watching, me spilling the entire Brad and Scarlet story to him.
“I’ll be fine,” I replied. “Thank you for listening to all of my stuff.” I felt a little bad for being such a downer all afternoon and living in the past.
“We all have our things, don’t we?” Leo said, sneezing a few times. I dug out a tissue from my purse.
“Speaking of having things we must do, what’s this call about you have to make?” He’d ignored a few calls while I was spilling my soul to him on the bench. On the way to the condo, though, he’d answered one and told him he’d call whoever was on the other end in an hour.
He stepped away to blow his nose for a moment. I shifted my weight on my crutches. “Jasper needs to go over some details with me for later this year apparently.”
“You don’t sound excited,” I noted, tilting my head.
