“I know I can’t stay here. I can’t stay in LA.”
The way she says it breaks my heart. Caroline always dreamed of coming here, of making it big.
“I’m sorry things didn’t work out for you, honey.” And I genuinely mean it. Caroline deserves all the good things in life, a successful business, a happy marriage.
I tried to give her one of those things, and I wasn’t enough. I just hope she gives me a second chance.
“I didn’t think he’d follow through,” she says as she shoves clothes into her bag. “I thought Paul was all talk. I didn’t think he’d ever hurt me.”
Tears well up in her eyes, and I put my arm around her. I hate that I’m comforting her over another man. I hate what that fucker’s done to her.
“I swear to God, Caro. I’ll track him down and I’ll—"
She cuts me off. “No, Tony.”
Her words make me pause in the fantasy I’m having of breaking this asshole’s arms.
“Violence is never the answer.”
It may not be, but it sure as fuck helps. Although I keep that thought to myself.
My priority is Caroline and getting her to a safe place where I can keep an eye on her. I’ll deal with Paul later.
It takes her less than ten minutes to grab her things.
She zips up her bag and has one last look around the room. I can almost hear what she’s thinking. LA was her dream, and this isn’t how she was meant to leave it.
My heart goes out to her. I take her bag in one hand and grab her hand with the other. She doesn’t pull away, and I give it a comforting squeeze.
“Come on, honey. Let’s go home.”
5
CAROLINE
The lights of LA flash past as we speed down the highway. Even at three in the morning there’s traffic on the roads. Someone’s always awake in this city, always doing something.
I glimpse palm trees and a vast blackness that must be the ocean.
As we leave the city behind, I think about the last eighteen months. How did I get it so wrong? How did I get Paul so wrong? He was nice to me, or so I thought, and his business contacts helped me get up and running.
If he was a little mean sometimes, I put it down to his hard upbringing.
I think about all the ways I failed here. A failed business, a failed marriage, and now my ex-ex-husband is driving me back to my hometown with nothing but a bag of clothes and a laptop to my name.
Yup, I’m officially the world’s biggest failure.
As I leave the city behind, my eyes sting, and I swallow the tears back.
I will not cry.
“Did I ever tell you how proud I am of you?”
Tony’s gruff voice cuts through my thoughts, and his words take me by surprise.
“What’s there to be proud of?”
Because I can’t see it. Every decision I’ve made has been one monumental fuck up. Although Tony doesn’t know the extent of Paul’s deception.
