Page 78 of If Love Had A Price (If Love 3)

His words were so flat and monotone they may as well have been delivered by a robot.

It was funny, how your emotions, your world, yourlifecould change in the blink of an eye. Less than an hour ago, Kris had been exhausted but on top of the world, riding high on an event well done and kissing the man she loved.

Now, she was numb from head-to-toe—her pulse pounding and her head throbbing as her brain scrambled to make sense of the words coming out of Nate’s mouth.

Kris supposed she should say something. Scream at him, maybe? But he technically hadn’t done anything wrong. He’d told her from the start that this was a summer thing, nothing more.

We have fun together. And neither of us will be the one walking away because we have a set deadline. It’ll be a mutual thing. Clean, easy. No hard feelings.

Nate’s words from their night on the boat came back to her, drowning out the sounds in the parking lot—the beep of a car unlocking by remote, the rustling of leaves when a breeze swept by, the bass drum of her heart as it kicked at her ribcage in a tornado of fury and anger.

How could she have been so stupid?Kris had always prided herself on not letting her emotions get the best of her, but she’d allowed the attraction and connection she’d felt with Nate blind her to the truth—for him, it was only lust. He’d wanted to date her because…why? So he could have sex whenever he wanted without having to go through the effort of wooing a different girl every night? Probably. Given it had an end date, that must’ve seemed like a good deal.

It was only now that Kris realized they’d never discussed their deadline when they’d agreed to be boyfriend and girlfriend, and she couldn’t even be upset with him because he’d told her from the beginning what to expect.

But just because she couldn’t didn’t mean she wasn’t.

Sample sale. Limited edition. Chanel.

Her previously soothing mantra had all the effectiveness of a surgeon using a butter knife instead of a scalpel. No fixing the massive crack in her foolish heart. Thankfully, her pride, though battered, remained intact, and it was that small mercy that kept her tears at bay.

“Okay.” Her voice sounded far away, like she was listening to herself through a bad phone connection. “Fine.”

Words that meant nothing, but they were all she could come up with.

Nate ran a hand over his face. For the briefest moment, his stony facade cracked, and pain shone through—a blinding, devastating slash of white-hot torment that disappeared when the shutters slammed shut once more.

“I didn’t want it to end this way,” he said. “I meant everything I told you so far. You’re amazing, but you and I, we’re not the right fit. Not for the long term. It wouldn’t be fair to keep this going when you’re—when you’re developing feelings for me. You should be with someone more like you, who can give you—”

“Don’t.” The word cracked through the air like a whip. “You don’t want to be with me? Fine. But don’t youdaretell me what I should do with my life or who I should be with. That’s not your place.”

Nate’s throat bobbed with a hard swallow. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“Well, it’s been fun,” Kris said stiffly, willing her tears to hold the fuck on and wait until she got home because the one thing she couldn’t handle more than having her heart broken was letting the heartbreaker see the destruction he’d wrought. “I guess our ‘deadline’ is a moot point. Things between us are over as of tonight.”

Nate flinched. His skin paled beneath his tan, and his fists clenched and unclenched like he was straining to keep his emotions bottled up.

“This is for the best,” he said. “We don’t—”

“Spare me.” Kris made a show of digging her keys out of her purse. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going home. It’s been a long night.”

She didn’t wait for his reply before she walked to her car, switched on the ignition, and drove home.

She made it only a quarter of the way before her vision blurred, at which point she calmly pulled over to the side of the road, turned off the engine, and collapsed into body-wracking sobs.