Page 119 of Stay With Me

She flipped her palms in annoyance. “Just what? You want me to tell you how I feel about this?”

“Whatever you need to—”

She tossed up a hand to silence him. “Because I don’t know how I feel about this. You made no promise to me that you broke, we have no official commitment of any kind to each other, and we certainly didn’t back then, after knowing each other for like three days, so yeah. I just don’t know how to feel, other than just …stupid.”

Stupid. Stupid summed it up nicely.

She closed her eyes and shook her head, knowing she was on the cusp of crying again—which only made her feel all the more stupid.

He brushed a hand over her hair and allowed it to linger on her arm. “Please don’t feel stupid—”

“I can feel stupid if I want to!” she shouted while batting him away. “Don’t tell me not to feel a certain way. You just said however I feel is fine, and I feel stupid so that needs to be okay with you.”

He briefly clutched his temples, then scrubbed his hands through his hair. “It is okay, but you’re not the one who is stupid. I am the one who was stupid—”

She shifted slightly farther away from him. “I don’t know, I think I am. I was the one who frolicked around that whole week all twitterpated, believing you were as into me as I was into you, and all the while you were…Ugh.”

She gripped the sides of her face and leaned forward to drop her head into her lap.

“Sammie, I was just as into you,” he insisted as he gently rubbed her back. She really wished he’d stop touching her.

“I am into you. I was into you immediately and was only more into you the more I got to know you. I got myself into a bad situation and responded in the worst way possible. It was a horrible mistake and I’m sorry.”

She didn’t say anything. She left her head on her lap for a few seconds, trying to coax herself back from the ledge.

He was clearly not the guy she’d seen him as this whole time. She’d had a tiny nagging feeling since almost the beginning. He’d always seemed too good to be true, and now she realized her intuition had obviously been onto something.

But she still couldn’t decide if what he’d done was bad enough for her to be as spitting mad as she was right now. Mad, disappointed, disenchanted. Her mind was spinning and she felt like she’d lost the ability to think and speak coherently.

She probably needed some space. He’d said enough, and now she was ready to leave.

She shook her head as she sat back up and looked at him.

“Was that all you needed to talk about? Or did you also have a bunch of food critics and restaurant patrons visiting you while you were laid up at your parents’ house?”

That was probably uncalled for, but she was past the point of caring.

He flipped his gaze upward briefly then gave her a look. “Sammie. Of course not.”

“So that’s all it was then?”

“Uh.” His gaze shifted again. “Well…”

She jumped from the couch and threw her arms in the air. “Oh,jeezwhat else?”

She began pacing furiously and felt his gaze following her.

“Like I said, I was not a good person. So when I suggested that trip, I didn’t have the best, umm … intentions.”

She stopped short, turned, and glared at him. Now all the pieces were together, and the picture they created was one she didn’t like at all.

After all, she’d seen it before—it wasEddie.Eddie part two.

“What, like you were taking me out there to murder me and hide my body?”

His jaw fell open. “Sammie! No, of course not. I was just—”

“You believed if we were alone for a whole weekend, I’d renege on my ten date rule.”