Page 21 of Say it Ain’t So

Because the truth was, she wasn’t here.

I ran back to the bedroom, slapping at the switch on the wall and raising a hand to cover my eyes as the lamps beside the bed glared. My heart pounded and my mind revolted as I took in the bags of clothing I’d had sent here from the boutique. I searched through them, trying to see if anything was missing, trying to understand what could have happened.

Grabbing my pants from the floor, I pulled them on as I shuffled into my shoes and snatched the last thing I wanted to see from the nightstand. I rushed from the room, out of the suite, down the fucking elevator that wouldn’t go fast enough. I hurried through the halls to the lobby, then the casino beyond.

She wasn’t there.

Joss wasn’t there.

I strung my hands through my hair, yanking at the strands as I spun in a circle, searching out the woman I’d fallen so hard for just yesterday. The woman I married. The woman I wanted to hold onto for the rest of my life.

The woman who’d left me.

Left our room in the clothes she’d been wearing when we met.

“Love you, Joss.” My throat tightened the way it had when I’d whispered those words to her as we made love last night.

And her response.

Her cry.

Her pain as she closed her eyes and threw her head back in what I had thought was the same love and ecstasy I was feeling to be able to call this woman my own.

Her response wasn’t to return those words.

It was nothing more than my name. My name whispered on a broken cry before she closed her eyes and left me alone.

My heart clenched in my chest, and I let out my own pained cry, a quiet roar that felt like it was ripping my heart in two.

I looked at my palm, at the symbol of what our lives could have been.

Her ring.

Her perfect diamond wedding ring.

Love you, Joss.

I loved her, but she didn’t love me back.

I wanted her, and she left me.

She left me without a word, without a note, without a reason why she wouldn’t stay. Why she wouldn’t love me the way I loved her. She left me and everything I’d given her behind.

Clutching her ring to my chest, I tugged at my hair once more, spinning one last time in the hopes that I could find her.

She wasn’t there.

Just as I knew she wouldn’t be as I tried to sleep last night.

I knew, in my heart of hearts, that what I’d given her wasn’t enough.

That my heart wasn’t enough.

With a heavy sigh, I turned back toward the elevators, only to find the same machine I’d stuck a twenty in the day before, when I was lost in the sight of the most perfect, beautiful, wonderful woman in the world. Just as I had then, I tore a bill from my wallet and shoved it in, expecting it to be as big of a waste as the last twenty-four hours had been. A redo of the day, as if it had never happened. As if I’d never seen her, never fallen for her.

Never married her.

Never loved her.