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“Shut the fuck up, Bill.”
I didn’t think my mind could get any more fogged. My knees suddenly felt weak, and my ankles were shaky. My heart refused to pump blood—my lungs couldn’t take in air. This couldn’t be correct.
“It was a setup…from the beginning?” I looked right at Roman. For the first time since I’d met him, the governor was speechless. “That can’t be right. You said…at dinner, at Angelo’s, that was when you…you were so mad at me for deceiving you.”
“You honestly believe that the governor of New York didn’t know every single person who stepped into that gala? That he didn’t have a plan from the beginning? He wanted you for his image, that’s it.”
Bill’s truth took the strength from every last bone in my body. Roman always had a plan. “And you played along?”
Bill nodded. “The morning I saw you standing in his office was a surprise. I didn’t think he’d actually go through with it.”
“That’s enough,” Roman said and turned his full attention to me. “Amy, all that was before I got to know you.”
“Oh, but you did know me. Didn’t you? And you manipulated me into thinking—”
My throat was closing, my body shutting down, unable to take the unbearable pain that was searing just beneath my skin. The one moment, the one night I’d clung to this whole time, had been a lie. He’d even gone extra lengths to make me believe I was the one responsible. Believe that…
“I was more,” I whispered.
“You are,” he said.
But I simply shook my head and willed my mind to hang in there just a little longer. To process this mess and not break down.
“The connection between us.” I could barely get out the last word, because there was no “us.” Not now, not from the beginning. “All of this was a setup. Lies.”
These past few months, that night at the gala had been the one piece of truth I’d relied on. I’d actually thought I had glimpsed the real Roman that night.
But like everything else, I’d been wrong.
“Amy.” He stepped toward me and I backed away, holding up my hand.
“Don’t.” Tears were in my eyes and I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t hold on anymore. I needed to get out of his office. I couldn’t cry, not there.
Everything about our relationship had been an even bigger sham than I’d known. And what was worse, everyone around me had known it.
What Roman had offered me, what we’d shared, had meant nothing to him. Bill, and God knew who else, had known the entire time.
Every moment Roman and I had spent together flashed through my mind. He had been adamant that to everyone else, we were real. But in reality, I had been the only one fooled.
The only one stupid enough to trust him.
My ribs were cracking and my body was folding in on itself. I was tired, tired with a kind of soul-deep exhaustion that inhabited every cell. Every ounce of sadness weighed heavily on me. I recognized this feeling: It was realization that life had just changed, drastically, and would never be the same.
Loss.
Total irrevocable loss.
But this time, agony in my chest packed an extra punch. Because for the first time, I was watching something die in me that I hadn’t even known was possible.
Hope.
/> Whatever iota of that feeling I’d clung to over the past several years was gone. I looked at Roman. His body was tense as if ready to pounce, his dark eyes burning like freshly sparked flares.
“Amy,” he rasped. “I love you.”
I gripped my stomach, because his words shot a painful, invisible dagger right through my gut.
“I don’t believe you,” I whispered.
