How could he possibly ever accuse me of such a thing? Have I not proven myself? Have I not done everything he’s asked, and done it exceptionally well? Have I not shown how he can trust me?

I charge toward the front door, where Huxley catches up to me.

“Lottie, wait.” He steps in front of the door, his breathing labored. “I’m sorry. Okay? That was stupid of me to ask.”

“You didn’t just ask, Huxley, you accused.”

“I know.” He pulls on his hair. “I was thrown off, okay? I wasn’t expecting to hear that Dave knows about the fake engagement.”

“So, the first thing you do is blame me?”

“No, I mean—hell, I was told Ellie told him. What was I supposed to think?”

“What were you supposed to think?” I ask incredulously. “You were supposed to trust me. You were supposed to approach me with the problem so I could help you find the solution. But you shouldn’t have come charging in here, blaming me. Not when I was—” I catch myself before I admit to what I was going to tell him tonight.

“Not when what?” he asks.

I shake my head. “Nothing.” Raising my chin, trying to be calm, I say, “I should’ve known this was all too good to be true, that you were going to end up hurting me somehow.”

He takes a step back. “Talk about fucking assumptions.”

“Uh . . . did you not just do that? Did you not just hurt me?”

“Not on purpose. I’m kind of fucked right now, Lottie. In case you haven’t noticed. This could ruin my entire business.”

“Maybe you should’ve thought about that before you started lying to everyone about having a fiancée and baby on the way. This is no one’s fault but your own.”

“I’d do anything to secure that deal,” Huxley says, snapping back at me.

“Including blaming me for something you should’ve known I never would’ve done.”

He scrubs his hand over his face. “You hated me early on, Lottie. It was a question I had to ask.”

“No, it wasn’t.” I close the space between us and poke his chest. “You should know I’d never screw someone over, especially when it comes to business, not after I was fucked over by someone I thought I could trust. I lost everything, Huxley. Angela took away the one thing I thought I was good at, made me feel small and not worth a goddamn penny. She denigrated me. After being treated so poorly, having everything ripped out from under me, do you really think I’d turn around and do that to someone else?” When he glances down at his feet in shame, I say, “No, I wouldn’t. I might have disliked you in the beginning, but that dislike would never have enraged me to do something as low as tell Ellie the truth about us.”

I move past him and open the door.

“Lottie, stop. Where are you going?”

I type out a text to Kelsey telling her to come get me. I know she won’t ask any questions, she’ll just show up and ask questions later. I just need to get out of here. I can’t possibly be around him.

“Kelsey is coming to get me.”

“I’m sorry, okay? I lost my cool. Let’s talk through this.”

“There’s nothing to talk about, Huxley.” I continue to walk toward the gate.

“So, you’re leaving? Just like that?”

I turn to face him. “Do you think I can stay here?”

“It was a miscommunication.”

My eyes nearly bug out of my head. “How can you be so apathetic about this?”

“I’m not being apathetic. I’m just trying to wrap my head around this.”

“Well, wrap your head around this, Huxley. I was planning on expressing my feelings for you tonight, and instead of me being able to do that, you placed blame where it shouldn’t have been placed, tore down the trust we built between each other, and you broke my heart.”

“Wait . . . what?” he asks, his eyes going soft with regret. “Your . . . feelings? What feelings?”

“Doesn’t matter anymore,” I say as a tear falls down my cheek. I didn’t even know my eyes were leaking. I quickly wipe it away, but not before Huxley catches sight of it.

“Fuck, Lottie. I’m sorry. I’m really fucking sorry. I shouldn’t have said what I said tonight.”

I move toward the gate, unable to listen to him over the roaring of my heart.

“Please, stay. We can work this out.”

“I can’t.” I shake my head. I feel so fragile in this moment. “I need some space.”

“Space?” He catches up to me as I walk through the gate and onto the sidewalk, where I wait for Kelsey. “What do you mean, you need space? Lottie, please, don’t do this. Don’t leave me.”

Kelsey’s car comes into view.

“Lottie.” Huxley reaches for my hand but I pull it away.

“Don’t.”

“Just fucking talk to me, please. We can work through this. We don’t need space.”

I turn around to face him as the tears gathered start to fall again. “I can barely look at you right now, Huxley. What makes you think I want to stay with you?”

Caught off guard by my tears, he rears back, and it’s all I need for my escape when Kelsey pulls up. I open the car door and start to get in, but Huxley says, “Please, Lottie. Babe, don’t leave.”

I don’t listen. I get in, shut the door, and buckle up.

Kelsey doesn’t say a thing, just drives away. We drive in silence all the way to her apartment.

Even when my phone blows up with texts from Huxley, she doesn’t say anything.

It isn’t until we’re in her apartment that she opens her mouth.

“God, Lottie, I’m so sorry.”

My eyes are puffy at this point.

I have no more tears left to cry.

And I’m curled in a ball on Kelsey’s floor, wrapped up in one of her blankets.

“I don’t understand,” I say quietly. “I thought . . . I thought he trusted me.”

“Sounds like he was caught off guard.”

I glance at her with a warning stare.

She holds up her hands in defense. “I’m not giving him an out, I’m just trying to understand where he’s coming from. I mean, could you imagine hearing that? He’s worked so hard, and for it all to just blow up in his face, he must be stressed.”

“He most likely is, but that doesn’t give him the right to lash out at me. He should’ve come home and asked me for help rather than accuse me. He basically threw everything we built between each other right out the window, as if . . . as if his business is more important than me.” And then it hits me. “Maybe . . . maybe his business is more important than me. Maybe I didn’t matter as much to him as I thought I did.” My lip trembles. “Maybe I liked him more than he liked me.”

“No.” Kelsey shakes her head. “That’s not the case. He likes you, Lottie. He came after you. I saw his face. He was devastated.” I wish that were the case.

“Maybe outwardly he acted as though he cared, but someone who cares about another person doesn’t treat them the way he treated me.”

Kelsey sighs and leans back on her bed. “Can I say something and you not hate me?”

“No. I have all the right to hate you for whatever comes out of your mouth.”

Kelsey grumbles something under her breath and then says, “I think you need to look at this from his perspective. He just found out his secret wasn’t a secret after all, that word is getting around that he’s a liar. He most likely blacked out and had a one-track mind. He didn’t think, he just reacted.”

I sit up from my balled-up position on the floor and look Kelsey in the eyes. “But that’s the thing you’re not getting, Kelsey. He reacted without thinking, and his reaction was to not trust me. I was about to tell him that I loved him. That he makes me so incredibly happy and every day I’m grateful to wake up in his arms.” Tears flow down my cheeks. “But to him, I’m something he’s willing to throw away over an assumption. Do you see the problem?”

Slowly, Kelsey shakes her head. “Yes, I see the problem. I wasn’t thinking about it that way.” She gets down on the floor and crawls toward me to scoop me into a hug. “I’m sorry, Lottie. I can’t imagine how much you’re hurting right now.”