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"I'm sorry," she said softly to her mother. "I should never have lied to you. Especially when you knew right from the start that everything wasn't okay." She'd purposefully avoided seeing or speaking with her parents and sisters during the week because she hadn't wanted to face the truth. She hadn't wanted to see that she was acting crazy.
Not good crazy, whatever she'd thought that was.
Bad crazy.
But now that she was forcing herself to be honest, completely, painfully honest, wasn't it also true that the way she felt as she sat in the back of the taxi wasn't entirely Cole's fault? He hadn't forced her to do anything, hadn't held a gun to her head and made her say the things she'd said to her family and friends and the journalist.
Just like she'd told him, everything she'd done, every lie she'd told, had ultimately been her choice. They were entirely on her own head. Weighing in her gut.
Creating the holes in her heart.
"No," she said to her mother, "don't blame Cole. He was doing what he thought was right for his sick grandmother. Marrying me was what he thought he had to do to make her happy."
The taxi driver turned his head slightly as if he was trying to hear her mother's reply.
Frankly, Anna didn't care anymore. The whole world already knew what a fool she'd been.
The whole world already knew that she'd fallen in love with a man who didn't love her back.
"I'm not making excuses for him," she said. "What I'm finally doing is telling the truth."
It would be so easy to fall into her mother's comforting arms, to let her sisters rally around her, to let them all crucify the man she'd married. So easy.
And so false.
"I screwed up, Mom. And I'll survive."
Somehow, some way, she'd figure out how to pick up the pieces and move on with her life. One day people would stop feeling sorry for her. One day she'd find another man to date, to marry, to love. And one day she'd go to bed and realize she hadn't thought about Cole for minutes. Hours even.
But just then, just when she thought she was finally telling herself the truth, she made the mistake of looking in the rear-view mirror.
"Promise me that you'll remember, sweetheart. No matter what happens. Promise you won't forget that I love you."
Oh God, she hadn't forgotten. How could she, when his declarations of love were still ringing in her ears, when she could still feel the sweetness of his touch all over the surface of her body?
But accepting Cole's love wasn't about memories.
It was about trust.
And trust was something she was all out of.
* * *
Cole wanted to knock the teeth out of every single person who stared at them as he and Anna walked through the airport. After she'd insisted on taking a cab, rather than driving with him to the airport, he'd thought she was going to try to outrun him once they got inside. But when he caught up to her at the security checkpoint, she silently waited for him to put his shoes back on and they walked to the gate together. She didn't look mad.
She didn't look like she was going to cry.
She just plain didn't look like she cared about anything either way.
That was the worst of all, Cole realized as he walked through the airport beside her: Her glow was gone.
And it was his fault.
He wanted to get down on his knees and beg her forgiveness. He wanted to hold her still in front of him until she agreed to listen to him. He wanted to kiss her until she believed that he loved her.
But they were onstage, so he couldn't do any of those things. All he could do was make it perfectly clear to each and every person watching that if they dared say even one word to either of them, or took a picture with a cell phone, they'd deeply regret it.
Shit. He couldn't stand this silence. Couldn't stand knowing how much Anna hated him.
Couldn't stand knowing how much he deserved it.
He got out his phone, typed in a text message.
He heard hers buzz in her purse and he thought for a minute that she was going to ignore it. But then she reached into her bag.
I LOVE YOU. PLEASE FORGIVE ME.
She ran her finger across the touch screen and deleted his message, then dropped the phone back into her bag, her expression not changing once.
What hurt the most was being so damn close to Anna, having a hundred things he wanted to say to her, and knowing that she wasn't going to hear any of them.
She was going to walk away from him before they got a chance to see what could have been.
And she would never believe that he loved her.
Chapter Twenty-One
"Mrs. Taylor, I stole your wish for your grandson and turned it into a horrible lie. I'm so, so sorry for what I've done."
Anna stood beside Eugenia's bed and waited for anger or tears or disappointment or all of the above from the woman she'd betrayed with a lie. Cole had wanted to come into the room with her, but she'd told him that this apology was something she needed to make alone.
Surprisingly, he'd respected that decision.
The other surprising thing was that his grandmother didn't look particularly upset about her confession. Anna couldn't understand it. According to the messages her sisters had been leaving her via voice and text and email, thousands of strangers were losing their minds on the Internet and TV over her fake marriage to Cole.
Shouldn't his grandmother be more upset than anyone?
"The truth is, honey," Eugenia said as she reached for Anna's hands and gently patted them, "love was never straightforward for me, either." She paused, held Anna's gaze. "And you do love Cole, don't you?"
"Yes," Anna admitted, unable to do anything but speak the truth now. "I love your grandson. But it doesn't matter. Not when I can't trust him."
"I know."
She couldn't believe his grandmother wasn't defending him. "What do you mean, you know?"
Eugenia sighed, shaking her head. "Just because I love my grandson doesn't mean I don't see his faults. He's bullheaded. Sometimes it's a good thing, like when he was chasing his dream to make a career out of football. But other times, he gets an idea in his head and follows it straight into a dead end." To Anna's surprise, the woman smiled. "Did he ever tell you about the first time I went to bail him out of juvie? He started talking back to me before we even got in the car, so I turned around and took him back inside. He didn't think I'd leave him there, but I did."
Anna shook her head. "He went to Juvenile Hall?"
"Oh yes. He spent a night in prison once, too."
Anna felt her eyes grow wide. "He was in jail?" She tried to tell herself she didn't care, that it didn't matter now that they weren't going to be husband and wife anymore, but she'd told herself enough lies already. "For what?"
