Page 74 of Ardently Yours

“Lizzie is this beautiful woman who owns her own cafe in Selah Falls. She befriended me and gave me a job. I’m a baker at the cafe. We’re in the process of becoming business partners now. Thanks to her, I have a job, friends, and a new life there. But I can’t go back.”

“Why not?” Mom asks.

I look at her, confused because she is the last person I would think cared about what happened between Lizzie and me.

“Mom? Why are you asking me that? I thought you didn’t like Lizzie?”

“I didn’t say that I didn’t like her,” Mom sighs, shaking her head, exasperated, which confuses me even more.

I don’t know what to say. Mom made it clear that she wanted me to reconnect with Caroline last night when we went to get snacks. But here we are today, and she’s saying something different. Dad’s condition really did a number on this family overnight.

“So why isn’t she here today?” Mom asks me.

“Yes,” Georgiana says, crossing her arms. “Tell them why she isn’t here, Willy.”

“Don’t call me that, Gia. And she left.”

Georgiana coughs dramatically. “No, no, no. She left after you told her to leave. Isn’t that right?”

“How would you know that?” I ask her, narrowing my eyes at her again. I hadn’t told her anything about why Lizzie left except that she got in her car and drove herself back to Selah Falls instead of coming to the hospital. “You were eavesdropping on us, weren’t you?”

“And if I wasn’t, I wouldn’t have heard how you have feelings for her, and yet you just let her leave!”

“She didn’t want me, Gia. And you are so nosy.”

“Wait a moment,” Dad interjects. “You just let her go?”

“She doesn’t feel the same,” I say defensively.

“She’s just scared,” Georgiana jumps in. “I saw the way she looked at you. That woman feels something for you. I don’t know what happened to her, but she’s scared of something.”

I think about this, realizing now how stupid I feel. Of course Lizzie is afraid of falling for me. She just had a situation that didn’t work out with a guy she thought was genuine.

Wickham spent years flirting with her, and then when they finally went out, it fell apart before it even began. Then there was the whole thing with her ex-fiancé, Billie, coming back to town.

I know that brought up a lot for her. I still think about the day she cried in her office, trying to pretend she was okay. She wanted to do this whole fake dating thing so she could fix her situation, push both of those guys away, and have a date to the wedding.

Why didn’t I think about that before? About how hard this could be for her?

I think about how scared she looked in the kitchen this morning. I don’t think I was wrong for telling her how I feel. But I should have been more patient. I should have told her that we could take things slow. Of course she doesn’t want to rush into something else.

But I’m also not a mind reader. I was too busy getting lost in my own emotions and feeling rejected by her to really stop and think about how she was feeling. I can’t believe it took my sister to point it out to me.

But I think there was a part of me that was ready to run again anyway. That I didn’t want to notice she was scared because maybe part of me already knew she was. I just assumed it was because she didn’t want to be with me.

Because I was blindsided by my own feelings for her and by how much it hurt when she didn’t fight for me the way I wanted to fight for her.

I wish I had her here with me now. I wish she could see my family on the mend. I wish she could be here holding my hand as I talk to my dad.

She’s the one person I want to call now that all of this is over. But I can’t do that. The way things ended, fake or not, she’s already gone.

“You don’t understand,” I begin to explain because now it’s going to sound like she really was my girlfriend, and I told them she was. Well, at least Dad didn’t know that yet. Now I feel like I have to clear everything up.

“Lizzie and I weren’t really in a relationship. We pretended to be because she needed a date for our friend’s wedding that’s coming up, and she wanted to get her ex-fiancé off her back. There was some drama with her family and this new guy. For me, I thought that if I had a girlfriend, it would make it seem like I was doing fine. I was also trying to make my case with you all so I could keep my inheritance.”

They don’t speak, so I continue, ready to tell the truth.

“It’s a whole lot of drama, and I feel like not only is all of that messed up, but she’s gone now, and I don’t think I can ever face her again.”