The Happy Ever After Playlist - Abby Jimenez Page 0,115

to find her artwork too. I’d asked him to take care of her once she was back in LA, and he had.

He also told me she hated me. That she couldn’t stand to even hear my name.

I’d accomplished everything I’d set out to do. She rued the day she met me, just like I’d needed her to. And my success was my greatest regret.

I finished my purchase. With any luck I could sneak back into my room without Zane ever knowing I’d been gone. I was walking to the door with the painting under my arm when I froze.

Kristen and Josh were parked in a black Honda just outside the gallery.

I darted behind a sculpture in the entry—and just in time.

She came out of nowhere, like the sun peeking through the clouds. If I’d been two seconds faster, I would have crashed right into her on the sidewalk.

Sloan.

Everything slowed.

She was just twenty feet away. We were separated by nothing but a sheet of glass.

My heart was a thumping bass in my rib cage.

I stared out at her from my blind. She looked even more beautiful than I remembered. She had on a red dress with bright-red lipstick. Her hair was down around her shoulders, and she was tan. She looked healthy, like she was taking care of herself like I’d hoped she would.

She was smiling at someone behind her, out of my line of sight. A beaming, radiant smile like the ones she used to give me when I’d sing to her.

My heart broke a thousand times every second that I looked at her.

I was going to go out there.

I didn’t even have control over it. My body had taken on some involuntary reflex in response to her sudden presence. The pull was so strong it felt like my very existence had just tipped in her direction and everything was sliding toward her. I took a step…

And then some fucking guy was opening her car door for her and helping her in with a hand on her back.

Chapter 44

Jason

♪ If I Get High | Nothing But Thieves

I don’t even know how I made it back to the venue in one piece.

I’d tempted Fate by going to the gallery, and Fate had called my bluff. I was fucking destroyed.

Seeing her with somebody else tore through my heart like a hot knife. It took the wind right out of my lungs.

Men had always looked at her, even when I held her hand. I went mad thinking of someone else touching her. Of her smiling at their jokes or cooking them dinner.

I’d been following the updates to The Huntsman’s Wife. I checked it every day. It was the only direct link I still had to her. She’d started posting regularly while she was living in Ely and she was cooking the game Dad had in the freezer. But a few weeks ago she’d posted a recipe for wild boar.

Dad didn’t hunt boar.

I didn’t think much of it at the time. I thought maybe it was something old, from when Brandon was still alive, that she hadn’t gotten around to sharing. But now that I knew she was dating, my mind went crazy wondering if she was seeing someone who hunted, obsessing about who she cooked for, who she was spending time with.

I knew she hadn’t been ready to date when she met me, so I’d hoped, for my own selfish reasons, that she would stay single for a while, that maybe we had been a special circumstance. It was the only thing that had kept me halfway sane all these months. But she wasn’t waiting. She was seeing someone.

Nobody would ever love her like I would. She would never find the same devotion, even if she looked for a lifetime. I knew that with every cell of my being. She’d never know about it, but it would always be there. When she married someone else, had children, when she grew old, I would still be out there in the world, cherishing her in secret. If she ever needed anything, I’d make sure she had it. It would be my penance for the rest of my life for not being able to do it in person.

Three hours after the gallery, I was in my dressing room, sitting with my head in my hands, like I had been for the last hour. Jessa was on and I had about thirty minutes to showtime. I’d go through it like the puppet I was now. My label