Page 130 of The Jealous Girl

A weight lifted from my chest and for the first time in weeks I felt like I could actually breathe.

He finally saw it. He understood.

‘I shouldn’t have brought you with me.’

My jaw dropped as I stared at him. I waited for him to take it back. To tell me he hadn’t meant it. But he didn’t.

I watched as Ryan pushed back his chair and walked out of the kitchen without looking back.

We don’t need any more help. We already have Charlotte.

Denise’s words circled in my brain. She’d always believed I was wrong for Ryan. That I didn’t belong here. Now he believed it too.

I was the only one still hanging on. But to what?

I turned before I could stop myself. I marched out of the kitchen and up the stairs.

I shouldn’t have brought you with me.

The words repeated with every step.

I reached the guest room, grabbed my suitcase from the corner and dropped it onto the bed.

All I had was him.

And, yet, now I realised I didn’t even have that.

Reuniting in Malta had felt so right, like everything was finally coming together. After all this time, I thought it was a second chance to do things right.

But, what if there were no second chances? What if all we ever got were repeated mistakes?

I’d worked so hard to get over Ryan the first time. How could I have been so stupid to get involved again?

Then again, if I was honest with myself, I hadn’t really got over him, had I?

We’d been twenty-one back then, too young to know much about anything, least of all love. But I was older now. I was supposed to be wiser. To have learned from past mistakes. And, yet, here I was, back where I’d started.

Perhaps I was exactly what Janine had always told me I was.

Too much.

Too emotional.

Too difficult.

And now Ryan realised it too.

He’d made his choice – I wasn’t it.

Maybe I never really had been.

45

NOW

Late August

Friday