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Everything looked exactly the same, just as I had left it. Carter was there, sitting behind his desk, typing away at his computer. His skin was a little tanner, probably from taking his new fiancée out on his father’s boat, and his dirty blond hair a little shaggier than normal, but besides that, not much had changed.
Carter didn’t bother looking up from his computer. “Bon, I thought I told you not to bother me for an hour unless it was an emergency.”
“Hi Carter.”
His brown eyes flicked up to meet mine, holding my gaze for five long, agonizing seconds. “Skye?” he said, his voice full of disbelief, as if he wasn’t sure if I was real or if he were hallucinating.
I’m the ghost of girlfriends’ past. Tonight, you will be visited by three apparitions you have wronged—
A feeling I couldn’t quite identify—sadness, anger?—tightened in the center of my chest. I watched him stand and round his desk, almost tripping over himself to reach me. Once he did, he wrapped his arms around me and pulled me into a tight hug, the familiar smell of his designer cologne making me want to choke.
“Skye, where have you been? I’ve been worried sick. Why didn’t you answer any of my calls? I was so worried, I stopped by your apartment. I even almost called your mom.”
Whatever nostalgic trance he had me under broke. I suddenly felt very claustrophobic in his arms. I pushed him away, taking a big step backwards. “Don’t touch me,” I said, my voice having a strange tinny effect in my ears. “You don’t have to pretend like you actually care about me anymore.”
“Skye-bunny,” he said, trying to meet my eye. I winced at the old nickname he had picked up from my family. “Of course I care about you. I’ve always cared about you; that’s why I was trying to call you. I wanted to explain—” He cut himself off, letting out a frustrated sigh. “Can you please just look at me?”
I raised my eyes, meeting his gaze with a hard glare.
His brows pushed together as he studied me. “You look good, Skye. Really fucking good. I’ve never seen you wear this,” he said, motioning to my skirt and tight top. “Is it new?”
“How long, Carter?” I asked, my voice trembling.
He blinked once. He took a moment to twist his features into a fake penitent one—the male equivalent of puppy-dog eyes. I’d seen him use it on his clients before, usually the irate ones who had just lost a lot of money on a bad deal.
“Bunny… I am so, so sorry that I didn’t tell you about Amelia. You have every right to be mad at me. It all just happened so fast. I had the hardest time after our break-up and then my parents introduced me to her at their club and we just clicked. Our parents have known each other for a long time, but her and I never got the chance to meet until she finished her master’s program and moved back to Baltimore.”
I raised my hand, silencing him. “I don’t want to hear about your fucking meet-cute. Answer my question—how long did you date her before you proposed?” I punched out each word in my question, loud yet slow, as if I was talking to someone who didn’t have two brain cells to rub together.
Carter’s mouth hung open, giving me a glimpse of his shiny, white teeth. They looked whiter than usual; he probably had gotten them bleached for upcoming engagement photos. That would explain the tan as well—a fake one, I could tell now that I was up close.
“Skye,” he said slowly. “C’mon, don’t be like this.” His throat bobbed; the collar of his pressed buttoned-down shirt suddenly looked a little too tight around his neck. “You’re better than this.”
The corners of my eyes burned like I might cry. But no tears came rushing forward. I had spent the last four months—longer, even—crying and worrying over this asshole. I was done crying. “Just be honest with me for one godsdamned moment of your life. I deserve that much at least.”
His eyes dropped to the floor and when he spoke, his voice was low. “Officially? We’ve been dating for three months… but unofficially? A year.”
Though I was prepared for the worst, it was still a swift kick straight to the gut. I nodded my head slowly, my entire body feeling numb after the sharp pain to my stomach quickly washed away.
“Okay,” I said quietly, more to myself. I turned on my heels, ready to march out. I had gotten my answer and really had nothing left to say to him. At least I finally knew why he had been so secretive the months leading up to our break-up. I thought he was planning a proposal. Nope. He was just sneaking around behind my back with Amelia. How could I have been so stupid?
He grabbed my wrist, stopping me in my tracks. “Can you please talk to me, Skye?” he pleaded. “Believe it or not, I do still care about you. This is not how I want things to end between us.”
Now I was really fucking pissed. I spun around, slapping his wrist away. His arm recoiled back to his chest as if I had bit off his finger. I wish I had.
“You want to talk? Okay, Carter. Let’s talk. You strung me along for eight years—eight years,” my voice cracked. “Almost a fucking decade. Honestly, I don’t know who I’m angrier with—you or me. You strung me along all that time, promising me that one day you would be ready to marry me. You just needed more time to work through your personal issues. And I waited because I was the idiot in love with you. Even after our break-up, when you would text me in the middle of the night asking me to drive to your house to be your personal pocket pussy—I say pocket pussy because our sex has always been for your pleasure and your pleasure only. I now know you are the worst, most selfish lover on the face of this planet and deepest condolences to your fiancée, seriously, because she has a long miserable, unsatisfied life ahead of her—” I cut myself off, taking a deep breath. I was getting off track. Carter stared back at me; silent horror etched across his face like I had just threatened to back my car over his grandma.
“Even during our break-up, I waited around because I thought you just needed more time, and our time apart would help you realize that you couldn’t be without me. Now imagine my surprise when I find out you proposed to some other woman . . . with my ring?”
He shifted his weight to his other foot. “I’m sorry, okay? I don’t know what else to say besides that.”
I breathed in and out of my nose, the roiling blood in my veins cooling off to a low boil. “Were you ever planning on proposing to me? Or were you just waiting until someone better came along?”
He ran a hand through his hair. “Yes? No? I don’t know. You know how much pressure my parents put on me.”
I scoffed. It didn’t surprise me that his parents had been meddling behind my back. They never liked me, despite how much I tried to impress them. They were nice enough to me, but they didn’t think I was good enough for their darling baby boy.
Mental note to send those uptight pricks a thank-you card for saving me from the biggest mistake of my life.
