Page 137 of Theirs for the Holidays

I can’t tell if they’re following me, and I don’t care. I push out of the building and into the cold night. We all drove together, but I don’t care. All I want is to leave this place right now. To get away from them, from my family, from all of it, and try to start forgetting any of it ever happened.

44

VIOLET

Two days later,I’m sitting in front of the fire, feeling like my house isn’t really my home anymore. The guys weren’t even here for all that long in the grand scheme of things, but they managed to change the way the house felt with their presence.

Their jokes and laughter, their banter. Now it’s just quiet. Empty. It feels like it did when I first moved in after my relationship with Andrew ended, and that just makes it worse.

After I walked out of the rehearsal dinner, I went to the only person I could think of that I could trust. It certainly wasn’t anyone in my family.

Simon opened his door and his arms for me, letting me break down while he stroked my back and comforted me. Talking to him made me miss my grandmother something awful, but he was kind and listened to the whole story when it came pouring out of me.

Of course, he was shocked, both to hear about the break up and that none of it was real in the first place. I pointed out that it technically didn’t even count as a break up, if we’d never really been dating.

Simon seemed skeptical of that. “I know what faking feelings looks like,” he said. “And what those men were doing was not that. If it wasn’t real, then I’m the King of England.”

Some part of me wanted to believe him, but that was just the naive part of me. The pathetic part that was too shy to stand up for myself.

I kept hearing those words Isabelle played for me, and thinking how, in the end, it made sense. In the back of my mind, I always knew I could never end up with them. They were accomplished and rich and handsome, and I was just… me. My happiness with them was like the snow on the ground. More fragile and delicate than it looked, and not destined to last.

“I don’t want to keep talking about it, Simon,” I told him. Maybe he could hear the weariness in my voice or maybe he could tell that I wasn’t in the mood for him to try to convince me of something I knew now wasn’t true. Either way, he backed off.

“What can I do?” he asked. “You need someone to be there for you right now.”

“I just want to go home,” I said. “I just want to be done with this whole mess. The guys are going to have to come get their stuff, so they can go back to their lives or whatever they have planned next. I don’t want to have to see them when they do.”

He agreed to act as a go between, to meet the men at my house so I didn’t have to see them. I know he thought it was the wrong move, and that I should have at least talked to them, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

Now that they’re gone and all their stuff is gone, it’s just me again. And that’s what it always comes down to in the end, isn’t it?

Just me, on my own. Dealing with my feelings and my pain, trying to put my life back together after someone has trampled all over it.

I should have sworn off Sullivan men after Andrew. I should have never thought it would be different with his brothers, just because they always treated me well.

Andrew treated me well enough in the beginning too. It just didn’t last.

It never lasts.

My phone buzzes on the coffee table for the third time in the last hour.

It’s my mother, calling again, and I cover my face with my hands and sigh deeply.

I know why she’s calling. It’s the night of Isabelle and Andrew’s wedding, and I’m not there.

I don’t answer, and the phone just rings again, so I snatch it up. Before I can even say hello, my mother is ranting.

“This isunacceptable, Violet. What is the matter with you? Your sister is getting married in fifteen minutes, and you’re not going to be here for her? You’re going to let her down when she needs you?”

I can’t help the bitter laugh that spills out of me. “She needs me?” I ask. “For what?”

“You are hersister,” Mom hisses. “And the maid of honor. Do you know how this is going to make her look?”

“She can have one of her friends stand in for me. I’m done, Mom. I’m done letting her walk all over me and putting up with it with a smile. I’m done putting her feelings over mine.”

I’ve never stood up for myself like this before, especially with my mom, but I’m so angry and hurt that I’m done going along with whatever other people want me to do just to keep the peace.

It never was peaceful anyway. It just ended up with me being treated like crap.