Page 35 of Love is Fake (Love is Everything #1)

“Don’t leave, for Chrissakes, not before we’ve talked about this!”

As I look at him, the scraps of our conversations start to come together. Puzzle pieces make their way into recognizable pictures.

“Of course you wouldn’t have told your family about me.” I shake my head at myself, wondering how I could have been so na?ve. “You couldn’t tell them you were with me when you were engaged to someone else.”

The word ‘engaged’ is like a dagger twisting in my stomach.

Whatever I thought we were, clearly I was wrong beyond belief. There was never an ‘us’, there was only him and me and now there is just me again.

“What was I? Just someone to pass the time with, while you waited for her to come back?” The thought makes me sick to my stomach. “I may not be what you want, but I deserve to be treated with more respect than that.”

“Iz, would you just calm down and let me explain?” Lennox growls, which just makes me angrier because everyone knows the worst thing you can possibly tell someone who is pissed beyond belief is to ‘calm down’.

“First of all, don’t ‘Iz’ me, we’re not friends, we’re not anything anymore.

” I ignore the hurt on his face because it’s nothing compared to how I’m feeling.

“And ‘explain’?” I virtually spit the word out.

“What’s there to explain, Nox? Can you tell me your damn engagement announcement isn’t all over social freakin’ media?

Can you tell me your fiancé isn’t upstairs right now moving back into your bedroom like she never left? ”

The bedroom I started thinking of as ours. The bedroom we’ve been sharing.

“Well if it’s on social media, then I guess it must be fucking true!” Lennox snarls.

“So it isn’t? Do you want to tell Honey or should I?” I challenge him, hoping he’ll take me up on it.

Please, just say this is all some big mistake. Say I’m the one you want.

“Dammit, it isn’t as simple as that, Isabella! God knows, I wish it were.” Lennox rakes his fingers through his too-long hair, reminding me that’s one more thing I’ll never do again.

“It should be,” I tell him, simply, feeling myself deflate like a popped balloon.

“It should be that easy, that simple, Lennox. Because if you don’t have a fiancé and the woman who barged into your house is nothing but an intruder then all it would take is one call to your security team and they’d throw her the hell out.

But back there, you couldn’t even tell her what we were to each other and you know why? ”

“Because –“

I put a hand up, stopping him in his tracks. “Because you can’t admit to having a fucking girlfriend when you’ve got a fucking fiancée, Lennox. Because you and I, we’re nothing but a dirty little secret that I wasn’t even fucking aware of.”

I can feel that I’m about to break down and I refuse to let that happen. I won’t do that in front of him. I have to hold onto any scrap of dignity I can at this point. I’ve already given too much of it away. Time for damage control.

“I’ll send someone to pick up my things.” There’s no way I’m coming back here to do it myself. I need to put as much distance between us as possible.

“You don’t have to – you can stay here as long as you like.”

“Ha!” My laugh sounds more like a dry wheeze. “Thanks, but I’ll pass.” The last thing I want is to sit around watching him and Bitchface Barbie playing happy damn families. My heart can only take so much of a bashing.

“Don’t do this, Iz.”

I flinch at his use of my nickname, the name he started using when things started to change between us.

“Me?” I shout at him. After what’s just happened, he’s blaming me? Hell no.

“I didn’t do anything , Nox. This is all on you. You broke us, there’s nothing left. That’s if there was anything real here to begin with.”

And that’s what cuts so deep, the realization that he never felt about me the way I did him, because if he had he would never have been able to do this to me. He would have never lied. Honey wouldn’t have been able to kiss him the way she did. And Honey would be the one leaving. Not me.

“Isabella, please, just give me a chance to-,”

I hold my hand up, stopping him right there because I’m fresh out of chances.

“I don’t want to hear your excuses, Nox. You can keep them.”

He’s standing so close, if I reach out my hand I’ll be able to touch him, but, even then, it feels like he’s a world away.

“What about the work we still have to do? The rehab.” Lennox is grasping at straws now and we both know it.

It’s a last ditch attempt to save something that’s already gone, something that apparently only existed in my mind to begin with anyway. I should have known, I should have stuck with what I always believed; love only screws up your life.

Love is fucking fake!

I learned that lesson when I was just a kid but somewhere along the line with Nox, I must have forgotten it. He made me forget it. But now it has come rushing back in glorious technicolor.

I look straight at him, ignoring how much it hurts, ignoring how much I want to go to him, to let him explain it all away, to let him tell me all the lies I need to hear.

“You’re all good now, Nox. You don’t need me anymore.” The heaviness in my tone tells him I’m not just talking about the therapy, I’m talking about whatever it was between us. I feel another crack in my heart at the knowledge this is it, I’m saying goodbye. I’m done here. “I have to go.”

“Shit, Isabella, at least let me drive you.” He takes a step towards me, reaching out and, although it takes everything I have, I step away from him.

“Noxy!” The blonde bombshell who’s blown apart my world with one sweep of her dyed mane totters over to us, laying her hand proprietarily on Lennox’s shoulder.

I want to rip her arm off, jealousy surging up inside of me like a tsunami. But I have no right. Lennox isn’t mine. He never was. He’s always been hers.

“Oh, you’re still here.” She looks me up and down, her expression saying exactly how little she thinks of me.

“Not for long,” I manage to grit the words out, ignoring Lennox’s pained expression.

“Noxy!” She whines and the nickname grates on me like nails on a chalkboard. “I’ve been traveling for hours, a massage would be div-iiiine.” She all but drapes herself over Lennox. Why doesn’t he stop her? He just stands there like waxwork, unmoving.

My automatic reaction is to shrink back, make myself small.

It’s what I would have done in high school and Honey, after all, is just another Carly, a beautiful bully.

So, I do the opposite. I stand a little taller, even though that still puts me at a serious height disadvantage to the model with her endless legs.

“I’m actually on my way out.” I motion towards the door, wishing- among other things – I was on the other side of it. “So, no.” No – it feels damn good to say that word. It sounds final, like all of this.

Honey huffs dramatically. “I’m sure you don’t have any clients more important than Nox.” Her voice is saccharine sweet as her painted talons stroke his shoulder. “You wouldn’t want him to tell your boss he doesn’t need your services anymore.”

My eyes widen. Seriously? She’s threatening my job now?

“That’s enough, Honey.” Lennox’s voice is sharp as he takes hold of the hand that’s rubbing him like a damn magic lamp, stopping her ministrations.

I don’t know if he’s telling her to stop touching him or to stop treating me like a damn servant. But I don’t care, I’m not waiting around to find out. I’m done with both of them.

“Noxy, why are you being like this?” Honey pouts at Lennox like a spoiled child.

“You should have told me you were fucking coming,” he growls. “This wasn’t what we agreed to.”

Whatever, I’m not hanging around to watch them have a domestic. Miss me with that bullshit.

Looking directly at Lennox, I hold my head high, my pride carrying me through, papering up the cracks over my heart, at least for now.

“Congratulations, you two deserve each other.”

I watch as Lennox’s face falls – as if he cares what I think – and as he takes a step towards me, I turn around and all but run out the door. I don’t stop until I’ve slid into the waiting Uber and told the driver to get out of here as fast as he can.

Familiar feelings of worthlessness threaten to overtake me. I hunker down in the back seat, willing him to drive faster, to put as much distance between me and Lennox as possible, as if that’ll stop the hurt.

So, this is what it feels like for a heart to break, I think to myself dully as I stop trying to hold the tears back. I don’t think I could anyway, even if I wanted to. I don’t know if I’m crying for whatever I thought we had ending, or because apparently it never really begun.

I’ve only ever been a stop-gap for Lennox, if that. I was never his endgame. I was stupid to believe I could be and that stupidity has landed me here; no man, no job and no damn idea what to do next.