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I stepped past her and shoved my way through the crowd on my way out, anger blinding me to every goddamn thing other than getting outside where I could breathe.
The oppressive summer night air hit my face as I shoved through the door, and it did nothing to relieve the choking, clawing feeling in my chest.
“Goddammit!” I yelled, startling a group of scantily clad women standing next to the building, smoking.
I stood there for five minutes trying to get my thoughts together. Truthfully, I guess part of me was hoping Cassie would chase me down. Tell me I was wrong. Tell me she wanted all of the same things I wanted.
But just like the times she’d fallen asleep during sex, my satisfaction never came.
It had been the week from hell. Every night I had slept in my shitty Chelsea apartment and wished I were in a California King in Midtown, enveloped in the arms of the one man I couldn’t get out of my head.
But I didn’t have time to sulk and mope.
I had to get my head straight for a big shoot for Cosmopolitan this evening.
It was a huge sixteen-page spread for their November issue, and I should have been excited about it. I should have been damn near brimming with energy over the idea of getting behind the lens, but thoughts of Thatch and me and us and everything that went wrong sat at the precipice of my mind, and I was having a hell of a time thinking about anything but him.
Fuck. Get it together. This is your career you’re screwing with here.
Plus, you’re driving a fucking sweet-ass convertible right now…
Which I was. When Cosmo had made the arrangements, I had offered to pick up the cherry-red Porsche prior to the shoot. Of course, those arrangements had solely been based on selfish motives and I had made sure I had the entire afternoon to drive this pretty baby around the city.
And God, she drove like a dream—cruising through the city with a quiet purr and taking turns with ease. It was a rare and refreshing experience to drive after living in a city where people rarely owned cars. There was just something about being behind the wheel, music blaring, roof open, and wind in my hair.
My mood started to lift as I weaved in and out of traffic, making stops at random for my Monday errands. After barely missing a parking citation for parking outside of Starbucks illegally, I headed toward Midtown and stopped at the dry cleaner. I was in and out of the quaint family business before the parking meter ran out of its measly ten minutes.
Stuck at a stoplight, I glanced in the rearview mirror and caught sight of Thatch’s cleanly pressed suits lying across the back seat.
“Oh, shit,” I muttered.
Did I really just pick up his dry cleaning?
It was like I had completely forgotten about everything that had happened—the breakup, the other night at the bar, him not wanting to be with me anymore.
“Fuck. Why did I do that?” I said to no one in particular.
You know why, you idiot…
I mentally chastised myself and refused to let my thoughts wander back to that sad place where I had to come to terms with the fact that Thatch wasn’t mine. That we weren’t together. That things were over between us.
“Fuck!” I shouted and turned up the volume to drown out my racing thoughts.
And I forced my brain to focus on my shoot as I headed for location.
“That’s perfect, Eduardo. Just tilt your head slightly up and to the right,” I instructed as he leaned against the Porsche with the New York skyline resting behind him.
I snapped a few photos from a side angle before changing positions and lying on my belly to grab some shots looking up at him.
“I never get to see you anymore, Cassie,” he said and hitched his hip against the car. “I don’t like it.” He flashed a playful smile in my camera’s direction. Eduardo was a male model I had known for years. He was about as attractive as one would imagine a male model would be, and I had noticed that very fact on more than one occasion. Believe me, we had experienced our fair share of afternoon shoots and late-night sex together.
I shook my head to clear it. The thought of him and me together made me feel dirty. Wrong. Uncomfortable.
He gave his signature smirk. “I think we should change that, gorgeous. Come out with me tonight after we’re done here.”
I paused behind my lens for the briefest of seconds as a million emotions ran through my veins and straight to my heart.
Normally, I would have taken Eduardo up on his offer.
Obviously, I had in the past, many, many times.
But I had absolutely zero desire to do what I normally did.
The only kind of normalcy I craved revolved around Thatch and us and spending every second of our time together. I wanted him. I wanted what we had. I wanted our happy bubble of jokes and pranks and hot sex and flirty winks.
God, I hated him.
Liar.
Well, I wanted to hate him.
I pulled my camera away from my face and glanced at my watch.
7:00 p.m.
My pink diamond engagement ring winked in the fading sun. Fucking winked.
I had to get rid of it. Now.
Which was why I tossed my camera in the back seat of the Porsche, opened the driver’s door, and told Eduardo to get out.
He stared back at me, confused.
“Get out of the car,” I demanded, and lucky for him, he listened.
Like a woman deranged, I didn’t waste any time or offer any explanations to the staff on set. I peeled out of the parking lot with a loud squeal of the tires and left in the middle of one of the biggest photo shoots of my career. All because a ring was fucking winking at me.
Fifteen minutes later, I damn near hit a few pedestrians as I parked illegally in front of the tattoo shop. I was out of the car and striding through the entrance within seconds. The bell above the door rang erratically, and Frankie looked up from behind the reception desk, his eyes wide with both recognition and shock.
“Cass?”
My mind wouldn’t let me do anything other than yell over him. “Take this fucking ring back!”
I yanked at it frantically, trying to free it from my finger, but it hung like Walter had hung on to Stan’s cage. At this rate, I’d be raw and bloody, but I was obviously beyond the point of caring about anything.
The one thing I cared about didn’t want me, so I wanted this reminder gone. Pulling and pulling, each yank opened up some untapped well of emotion, and by the time it even came close to coming off, I was sobbing.
“Come here,” Frankie said, taking me by the elbow and gently leading me to a chair in the back. He went into the bathroom and came back out with a tissue, offering it to me with a kind smile. “Take a minute and calm down,” he instructed gently.
I wiped at my eyes and found myself irrationally cursing his steely ways. “Fuck you for being so steady right now.”
He smiled, and it honestly surprised me how receptive I was to it.
“Feel better?” he asked softly, and I shrugged.
“A little.”
“Good.”
Now that I wasn’t so agitated, the ring slipped free of my finger with ease. I closed it in my fist and concentrated on giving it up. Every cell in my body was shouting its refusal. I clamped the ring harder in my hand until I felt the sting of the diamond pressing into my palm.
Eventually, I took a deep breath and found the strength to shove the ring toward Frankie. “Give this to him.”
He shook his head. “I think you should give it to him yourself.”
A thousand emotions pulsed through my veins until my ears buzzed with the erratic pounding of my heart. Why wouldn’t Frankie just take the fucking ring? Didn’t he understand? If I had to be the one to hand Thatch back the ring, my fucking ring, it would be the final straw. Having to face him and face the truth that we were really over would destroy me.
“I can’t,” I spat. “It rips my heart out to see him, so you can take the ring or I’ll flush it down the toilet!” I shouted, throwing it to the floor when he still didn’t hold out his hand.
His expression remained neutral. “Do you want to hear what I think?”
“No,” I answered obstinately. His eyebrows went up in challenge, and I folded like a poker novice. “Yes,” I admitted.
“Go on, sit down,” he directed, and I had no qualms with following his orders. I was dog tired from the long day, but mostly, I was exhausted from having to remind myself a million times a day, every goddamn day, that I couldn’t call Thatch or text him or do anything that revolved around him because we weren’t together anymore. Our breakup felt like a constant one-hundred-pound weight on my shoulders.
“You scared Thatch last week.”
“I know. And hurting him burned a hole through my heart. But I’m really not interested in being the ghost of his ex-girlfriend.”
“Well, I’m glad to know you’re so sympathetic—”
I cringed. “God, I’m so sorry,” I found myself apologizing. “That was a really dick thing to say.”
Frankie nodded. “Yeah, it was, but it’s okay,” he accepted. “And this has nothing to do with Margo.”
Thatch had said the same thing. I wasn’t sure I believed either of them.
“Sure, that’s how she died,” he went on, and my eyes widened. He nodded again. “Yeah. Jumping off a cliff into a shallow pool of water, right after Thatch begged her not to.”
His words hit my chest like a bullet, and I inhaled a shaky breath.
“So it is about her,” I said on a whisper.
