Tears she had clearly been holding in start to fall, so I pull her to me, cupping the back of her head.
“She’s fine, Nat. I can bring her home tomorrow. She’s going to be fine. Wait.” I crouch and hold her face between my hands to look her in the eyes. “You shouldn't be here. Tonight is your engagement party. You should be there. Not here.”
Fuck. Maybe if I hadn't turned my phone off, I could have told her to stay.
“No. This is where I’m supposed to be. I want to go see her in the morning, and I want to be here when you bring her home. I want to help.”
“Natalie, you?—”
“It’s the least you can do after keeping me in the dark. Friends don’t do that to each other.”
She blows out a breath and then tosses her purse onto the couch and drops to sit next to it.
“You should have called me,” she says softly, looking over the back of the couch at me.
I close the door and then take a seat by her.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry too,” she says. “I’m so, so sorry.”
She scoots closer to me and leans her head onto my shoulder.
She doesn’t say anything more, and neither do I.
I have so many questions. Too many, but right now, I feel like I can breathe better than I have in months.
It’s just me and Natalie.
If there’s anything else we have to talk about, it can wait until the morning.
For now, I just want as much time as she will give me.
CHAPTER TEN
NATALIE
The moment I wake up, the last twenty-four hours race through my mind. Guilt, relief, sadness, anger—they all hit me at once.
I roll to my back and look at the plain white ceiling, blowing out a breath.
Did I really walk out on my engagement party, and did my ex-fiancé really call me by another woman's name?
A name his mother always called me.
A name that clearly meant something to them.
Yes, yes it did happen.
I drape my arms over my eyes.
Fuck Griffin.
I can’t believe he fooled me as badly as he did. How was I so blind? How did I not notice or look for it?
The fact that Tobias didn’t even like him was a sure sign. Tobias likes everyone, but Griffin is different.
I try not to cry at how I’d told myself that Tobias didn’t like him only because he took up Tobias’s share of my attention, but turns out, Tobias was onto something.
