Page 112 of All I Feel

He probably went home, realized I wasn’t there, andassumed I was so angry with him that I decided not to be there when he arrived.

The entire morning replayed in my mind. I couldn’t forget the way Ace had looked at me with such disgust. And even though he’d been shouting at me then, when I thought about it now, I realized it was agony I’d heard in his voice.

I closed my eyes and let out a sigh as my head dropped forward. I couldn’t imagine what Ace must’ve thought about me. And there was no telling now if I’d ever get the chance to work things out with him. To let him know how much he meant to me.

When another knock came at the door, my head snapped up. The man with the gun stood and said, “You’d be wise to stay put, or this is going to get messy very fast.”

I wasn’t some skilled escape artist, I had no weapon, and there was about to be another person here. Only a fool or someone with nothing to lose would consider trying to make a run for it with their hands bound behind their back.

So, as much as it pained me to do nothing, I sat there and waited. And a moment later, I wanted to throw up.

Because even though I’d already had the thought that he was responsible for this, I guess there was some small part of me that wanted to believe he wasn’t entirely evil.

Ryan walked into the room, and his eyes locked on mine.

“I hate you,” I spat, not giving him a chance to speak. “If there was ever any chance of me being civil with you, that chance no longer exists.”

“Tessa, I didn’t have any?—”

“Oh, shut up. I don’t want to hear you tell me you didn’t have any other choice, Ryan,” I shouted. “You had another choice. You could’ve left me alone. You could’ve taken someaccountability, realized how badly you fucked up, and walked away from me.”

“Tessa, please listen to me,” he begged.

I shook my head. “No. No, I don’t want to listen to a thing you have to say. Wasn’t it enough that you broke my heart?”

His expression turned pained as he moved closer to me, his footsteps cautious.

“Why couldn’t you just leave me with that? After what you did, I deserved the decency of you respecting my choice to get over you and move on.”

Nodding, voice downtrodden, he said, “I know that now.”

Ryan’s response took me by surprise. Ever since things ended between us, he hadn’t once admitted to being wrong. Hearing that now, I could only wonder if he was saying that as a way to cover himself for all the legal trouble that might be coming his way as a result of having me kidnapped.

“Oh, good. Since we’re all here now, we can get started.”

At the sound of the new feminine voice coming from the opposite direction, my eyes shot to the side. My lips parted in shock at who I saw there, as I wondered how I hadn’t known someone else was in my home this entire time.

“Georgia?” I murmured.

She didn’t look at me as Ryan said, “Georgia, this is crazy. You’ve taken things too far.”

My brow furrowed as she smiled at him and moved in his direction. “I’m doing what’s necessary to keep what’s mine.”

“Okay. I understand. But hurting Tessa isn’t going to make me want to be with you again,” he returned.

My stomach dropped, and my eyes rounded. Georgiawas Ryan’s ex. She was the woman he’d been cheating on me with for the last six months of our relationship. And the moment I learned the truth, the moment I decided to end things between us, he scraped her off.

Now, she was a woman scorned. A woman who’d scheduled appointments at my salon—ultimately using that manicure to rake her nails down Ryan’s face recently.

Perhaps I could appeal to her sensibilities.

“Georgia?” I called. When she looked in my direction, I said, “This isn’t necessary. I don’t want to be with Ryan.”

“But he wants to be with you,” she explained.

“What does that matter? I’ve moved on. I’m with someone else who loves me, and I’m happy. I’m never going to get back together with Ryan.”

She shot me a sinister smile. “Maybe you feel that way, Tessa. Ryan does not. Ryan hasn’t accepted that it’s over between the two of you. Ever since you found out that he was cheating on you with me, that he never really got over me, he decided he no longer wanted me. I have to do what’s necessary to make it so he can stop pining for you.”