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“Because I love books.” It was that simple. I remember feeling like my heart was tearing in two. Someone was trying to ruin the only thing I loved.
“So why didn’t you tell them all about them?”
“Because I don’t want them to know about them.”
My mom stared at me. And I realized she understood. “Do you want to do beauty pageants, Maddie?”
I shake my head. “I hate them.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that before?” she asked.
“Because you love them. Because you wanted me to do them, and I love you.”
I couldn’t stop the tears from falling as she hugged me. “You don’t have to do them anymore, sweetheart. I know you love me, but you have to love yourself more.”
I had spent thirteen years doing beauty pageants for my mom and because it was just the way things had always been. I’d spent thirteen years being miserable for someone else.
When I finally stopped, there wasn’t anything else in my life. No more coaches, no more dress shopping or weekend trips to New Jersey. There was just a void.
I’d spent my entire life doing something I hated, but a part of me was happier doing that than having nothing.
I wasn’t a person outside of pageants. I was nothing. No friends. No activities. No hobbies except reading.
I had to create my world all over again, and it was the hardest thing I ever did.
They say that grieving is important after you lose someone, that you can’t process the fact that they’re gone until you’ve felt the emotions. And I need to let Em go because I know he can’t let Emery go.
That’s why I’m laying in my oversized chair with my eyes closed. Thoughts of all the sweet and sexy things he did with and for me floating through my mind like ghosts I’ve given permission to haunt me. I compare them to the men I’ve dated before him.
The routine dates. The routine six minutes of humping and then passing out. The routine “I love you”. Men who made me think no one could live up to my fantasies. Men who made romance heroes look like gods.
Compared to a man who introduced me to my favorite author and bought me a treasure of a book. The man who turned fantasies into reality. My personal book boyfriend.
Once upon a time, I went out looking to get under someone to get over Emery. Not this time. That disappointment would only make me want to crawl back to him more.
No, the best way to get over Em Brooks is to relive the memories, to go through the grief just as fully as if he’d died. Even though he still breathes, he has to be dead to me.
That’s the only way I’ll ever move on with my life because I spent thirteen years living a life for someone else, and I can’t do it again.
Chapter 53
Emery
“I don’t understand,” Dante says from behind me. The sledgehammer crashes against the wall, and plaster explodes in a puff around the hole. I’m sweating in a way that I haven’t since before college.
This is the third wall I’ve destroyed in my house. Ripped all the way down to the studs.
I lean on the huge sledgehammer that I bought for this specific purpose. It’s already looking like the one in my dad’s shed.
“She’s right,” I tell him as the breaths come out shallowly. “Why the fuck am I still pretending about all of this shit? Why am I still showing up at red carpet events when I don’t want to go?”
Dante’s sitting in the living room with one leg crossed over the other, a glass of Scotch in one hand and his phone in the other. “I don’t fucking know, man. How is anyone supposed to know why you do the shit you do? It was your idea to start the whole charade, and Noah and I just kind of went with it.”
I shake my head. “It was necessary back then. We were nobodies, but we had to act like we knew what we were doing. Like we were important. Even after we had a solid business, I had to keep everyone’s attention so no one saw you acting like a fucking idiot and Noah acting like someone pissed in his Cheerios.”
Dante shrugs and takes a sip of his Scotch as I continue, standing up taller. I don’t believe we would be where we are if I’d been myself all these years. I’ve made more deals sitting next to models than I ever did in an office. People are drawn to the man who can have as much fun as I pretended to while still being a genius.
“But you had fun, didn’t you? Who wouldn’t want to fuck as many women as we did? And we party like rock stars when we’re just three guys who own an advertising company. We got invited to everything, man. Everything. Don’t get me wrong, I was glad it was you and not me that got us invited to stuff, but it’s been a wild ride.”
