The Happy Ever After Playlist - Abby Jimenez Page 0,118
broken and she didn’t want to stare at the cracks. “What’s that?” she asked, nodding to the paper-wrapped painting I had propped against the wall.
I cleared my throat. “It’s just something I bought.”
“Oh. Can I see it?”
I nodded and she got up. When she peeled off the brown paper to look, she gasped. “Wow. That’s a really cool photo of you.”
I looked up and had to clutch a hand over the punch to my heart.
It was me.
Sloan had painted me.
I stood in the lake, in my waders. It was that day in Ely when I’d been putting in the dock. It was the moment right before I’d kissed her.
Tears threatened, and I had to put a hand on my mouth.
She’d painted this from memory. It was like seeing the moment through her eyes. This was how she had seen me that day, smiling and happy.
I’d been happy because she was there.
And I’d never be that happy again.
She wanted to get rid of it. She’d dropped this off to be sold and then left on a date.
The tears in my eyes rolled down my cheeks and I let them.
“What’s wrong?” Lola asked.
I shook my head. “My life is a mess,” I said, talking to the canvas.
She laughed a little. “Someone smart once told me you can start over again. Start now.”
But it was too late for starting over. I still couldn’t make Sloan safe. Not unless the public was suddenly more interested in buying magazines with pictures of me and her in them instead of me and Lola. And I’d done my job too well. Ernie said she hated me, that he couldn’t even mention my name without her face going hard. She was dating. She was moving on.
The damage had been done.
Chapter 45
Sloan
? Proof | Jaxon Waters
Adrian had two hands behind his back. “Pick one.” He smiled and his green eyes creased at the corners. We were sitting in a steakhouse waiting on appetizers.
Adrian held open doors for me. He pulled out my chair and ordered me a glass of wine that he seemed to know a lot about. He was funny, charming, and engaging. Intelligent, successful, and attractive. And he was trying very hard to show me a good time.
It totally wasn’t working. I couldn’t stop thinking about Zane’s letter.
Adrian waited for me to pick a hand. I pointed unenthusiastically to the left one. He put a full-size bottle of vanilla creamer on the table in front of me. I cracked a small smile. We’d stopped at the gas station on the way over and he’d caught me putting a few single-serve creamers in my purse.
“Smooth,” Kristen said from across the table. “But she likes the little ones.”
He smiled. “Well, I can’t help you there.”
Kristen kicked my shin under the table.
Adrian was flirting with me. Hard.
And I. Felt. Nothing.
If the complete and total lack of butterflies in my stomach wasn’t depressing enough, I kept looking at the clock. One hour until Jason’s show. I felt like I was going to burst into tears. The moments that he was in town were ticking down before my eyes. Running out like sand in an hourglass. And instead of being where he was, I was on a date with someone amazing who couldn’t even hold my attention because I was too damaged and in love with somebody else to even entertain it.
“Excuse me.” I got up. “I need to use the ladies’ room.”
Kristen’s chair raked against the floor as she got up to follow me. As soon as the door closed behind us she pounced on me. “Damn, that dude wants to eat you alive. I think you should let him.”
“And I think you need to see this,” I said. I dug in my purse and pulled out the letter. I unfolded it, handed it to her, and watched with my arms crossed as she read it.
The longer she looked at it, the deeper her frown got. “Oh my God…” She looked up at me. “Do you believe what she said?”
I sniffed and nodded. “She wouldn’t lie. And the Lola thing never felt right. That’s why I came back to his hotel room that day. There was something off about it from the very beginning. Why would he lie about it, though?”
She pursed her lips. “I don’t know, Sloan. Maybe he had to lie to you to break up with you. I mean, you know how you are.”