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“I’ve been wanting to tell you, but I just didn’t know how. But—” I hesitated again, feeling my throat closing up. I pushed through it. “I can’t marry you.”

Wes’s eyes searched mine, pain smearing across his face. “What do you mean? What are you talking about?”

I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t stare into those golden hues and lie to him. I backed away, placing more distance between us. “I can’t marry you, Wes,” I repeated. “I-I’m in love with Matias.” I purposefully looked away, not wanting to see the hurt I knew I was causing him.

Silence filled the space for two heartbeats before Wes grabbed my arm and forced me to face him. “I don’t believe you. Why are you doing this? What aren’t you telling me?” he insisted, anguish and desperation lacing his voice.

I tried pulling away from him, but he gripped my arm tighter. “Iamtelling you, but you’re just refusing to listen. I don’t love you, Wes. I’veneverloved you.” I watched as the wordsreverberated within him—a kaleidoscope of emotions taking their turn across the planes of his face.

“I don’t believe you,” he repeated again. But I heard it. I heard the doubt seeping in.

“Matias!” I called. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t do this to him. But I had to. I had to break him.

“Don’t call for him,” Wes spat out, taking a forceful step towards me and yanking me closer. I stumbled forward, wrapped once more in the intoxicating essence that was Wes.

The awakening scent of eucalyptus opening my lungs…

The familiar heat that was his chaotic and masculine energy…

And the sculptured strength of a body I wanted nothing more than to surrender myself to…

I wanted him. I wanted Wes. And that want strung the gossamer thread of my resolve too tightly, threatening to snap…

But it was too late.

Matias ran to us, Blondie hot on his heels. Within a few seconds, Matias forced himself between us, shoving Wes back hard.

The furrow of Wes’s brows deepened, anger spreading its wings across his face as he rolled his shoulders back. “Don’t you fucking touch me,” he growled at Matias.

But Matias rose to the challenge, bringing himself up to his full height, face twisted in a scowl as he got right in Wes’s face. “Can’t you fucking hear her, bro? She’s done with you. Touch her again, and it’ll be you and me, Wes. You and me.” I pulled on the back of Matias’s shirt, and he stepped away from Wes, putting distance between them.

Wes breathed heavily, and I could see the wheels spinning in his head. He turned his gaze back to me. “Mara,” the word left his lips with so much hurt, so much despair, that I wanted to pull him into me and hold him. To tell him the truth…

But this was for his own good.

“Please,” he begged. He was actuallybeggingme, and that tore me to shreds. “Don’t do this to me.”

My lips parted, my heart breaking in two. I swallowed as I stepped in front of Matias. “I—I wanted to love you. I prayed to the universe to help me feel something—anything—for you. But I…I don’t.”

“The gala,” he uttered. And his pain…so much pain. “After the gala—”

No, no, no, no.I couldn’t afford to remember that night. I spun on Calista. “Tell him what you saw that night,” I ordered, my voice shrill. “Tell him!”

Blondie looked at me, taken aback by my frantic nature. She arched a brow before she faced Wes, hesitating only for a moment before finally letting him have it. “I saw them kissing on the balcony…right before you asked her to marry you.”

I looked back at Wes and witnessed the color drain from his face. “But after…” he repeated, the words hardly a whisper as they escaped him.

He didn’t want to believe the lie I was trying so hard to get him to accept as truth. But he had to. I needed to stamp out any hope he carried in his heart. He couldn’t know just how much I truly loved him. It was going to kill me, and I knew I was going to rot in hell one day for what I did next. But it was the only other thing I could think of. The only thing I knew would seal the deal and hammer the final nail into the coffin of Wes’s heart.

“I know how it all felt.” I swallowed, searching for strength. “But whenever I look at you, I only see Chase.” Wes froze, his entire body going rigid. I pushed further, finding the wounded nerve and striking it hard. “I only seehim, Wes. I only feelhimwhen you touch me. And I-I imaginehimwhen you kiss me. I don’t see you. And that’s not fair to you.”

That did it. I watched as the sting filled his eyes, consuming the tortured expressions on his face. And my heart broke. I felt it crack and shatter into a million pieces within me.

Wes closed his eyes, turning his face away from me as he breathed heavily, deeply. I wanted to touch him. To cup his cheeks and kiss the pain away. But I stood my ground. I stood my ground as Wes rode the waves of sorrow and agony until finally his breathing steadied.

Slowly, he raised his head, and I watched as the stoic mask—the mask I hated with the depths of my soul—came crashing down into place. As the walls I had worked so tirelessly to break down rose, encasing Wes in his own emotional prison.

I could barely breathe, my lungs desperate for renewed breath. With trembling fingers, I pulled the ring from my finger, feeling the weight of my hope-filled fairytale, and held it out to him. “Here. This belongs to you.”