Page 69 of Never Let Go

I’d really put myself out there for this guy. Really believed in my heart of hearts that he might just be the one.

I hugged my arms around my midsection and rushed down the path, praying that perhaps the cab that’d dropped me off was still hanging out in the parking lot. Never before had I felt this stupid, and to make matters even worse, as I rushed away from him and the complete humiliation I’d felt in that café, it started to rain.

The heavens opened up and dumped buckets of icy water over me, ruining my pretty, perfect hair and my gorgeous makeup. Things Ashley and Chase had paid for to thank me and to help make this evening everything I’d never even dreamed of having—and now this.

I supposed it was only right that the rain that had been threatening all day was suddenly pouring down now, putting the shitty, rotten cherry on top of the most horrible, embarrassing moment of my life.

“Shelby! Wait!” Foster called from behind me, but I didn’t stop. I didn’t turn around. I didn’t want to know what he had to say for himself.

I didn’t care.

All I wanted was to get out of there.

I didn’t want or need his pity.

So what if I’d had a crush on him in fucking college? He’d admitted to having had one on me too—although that had probably been a lie.

It still hadn’t given him the right to mess with me now. I honestly didn’t even know why he would’ve wasted all this time with me. How much of a kick could he really have gotten out of it?

Tears blinded me. I hit the street, looking around wildly, but there were no cabs in the parking lot and, unfortunately, no taxi heading my way either. Absently turning left, I just kept rushing. I didn’t know where I was going or if it would’ve been better to go right, but I still needed to get away and I could still hear his heavy footsteps on the path behind me.

“Shelby, please? I can explain. Just wait up.”

“No!” I yelled into the pouring rain, then stopped abruptly and whirled around to face him. My arms were still around my waist and my entire body shivered with rain and cold. “You’re nothing but a liar and a fraud, Foster O’Brien. Stay away from me!”

His face fell before it contorted in hurt and confusion. The next thing I knew, his hands were coming up and he was holding them out to me like I was some kind of deer he was afraid of scaring away. “It’s not what you think, Shelby.”

I snorted. “It’s not? How do you know? You have no idea what I’m thinking. How could you do this to me? You are the worst kind of person and I never want to see you again, Foster. Stay. Away. From. Me.”

After those words vehemently shot out of my mouth, I spun away from him again and started crying even harder. Then I saw a cab coming toward me. My hand shot into the air and relief barreled through me when the cabbie stopped to pick me up.

I yanked open the back door and dropped into a shivering, sobbing heap on the backseat. Foster stood in the rain with his hair slicked down and that weird, contorted expression still on his face.

He looked crushed, but it couldn’t be that. Maybe he was just disappointed that I hadn’t stuck around for him to rub it in. To really make me a laughingstock.

Another sob tore through me and I wrenched my gaze away from his, lifting it to meet the cabdriver’s compassionate eyes in the rearview mirror. “There’s a towel back there you can use. Where are we going, ma’am?”

I pulled myself together enough to give him my address. Then I reached for the neatly folded towel on the seat beside me and wrapped it around my shoulders. For the rest of the drive home, I stared out the window miserably and tried to keep myself from bawling my eyes out in front of the kind driver.

As soon as he dropped me off though, the tears started coming hot and heavy again. I stripped out of the dress as soon as I was in my apartment, and I headed directly for the shower and stayed under the hot spray until I finally stopped shivering.

After I got out, I wrapped myself in a towel, quickly dried off, and changed into a pair of threadbare, comfortable pajamas, and then I wrapped myself in a blanket on the sofa with some ice cream. The sobs came back. I pressed play on the first sad movie I came across and felt sorry for myself.

The truth was that I should’ve known it was all too good to be true. Girls like me didn’t get the knight in shining armor appearing out of the dark to save us from the single ladies’ song at our best friends’ weddings.

Girls like me were the oddballs, the perpetually single ladies who pretended to be proud of it and who went back to work after the wedding, raving about how one day, when it was our turn, we wouldn’t torture our friends with that dang song.

At least, that was the way I felt right now. Like the oddball. The perpetually single lady who would be going to yet another wedding alone and pretend like it wasn’t the loneliest feeling in the world to watch yet another couple that I loved get married without having anyone beside me whose hand I could hold.

33

FOSTER

After the reveal, I hadn’t known what to think. I’d been as shocked to realize that Shelby was Amanda as she seemed to have been when she’d seen me, but the difference was that she appeared to have jumped to some horrible conclusions about everything.

Why? I didn’t know. I’d never given her any reason to think I was a liar or a fraud, and I certainly didn’t know why she’d called me a horrible person. It didn’t make any sense whatsoever. So after she’d jumped in that cab and raced away, I’d done what rational people in my situation did.

I’d gone home and drank too much on my balcony, and then I’d stumbled to bed and fallen into a dreamless sleep. Back at work now, I was still stunned and so confused that I didn’t know my ass from my elbow.