JENN RODE HOME WITH the windows down, and by the time she reached her apartment in the suburbs of Richmond, she was pretty sure all her tears were dried. All of them. She felt as if she’d been crying nonstop for the past month, feeling sorry for herself even more than she’d felt bad for Chloe.
But now it was done. She’d confessed. And she’d heard a hard truth about herself. She was living her life afraid of becoming her mother. Hell, she’d known that before, but it sounded so much more pitiful coming from someone else’s mouth.
Chloe was right. Jenn had been raised to believe that all men were cheaters. How many times had her dad said that? “Men aren’t wired to eat the same meal every day for the rest of their lives. They like variety.” Her mother had accepted that, and so had Jenn. Her mission hadn’t been to save Chloe from being cheated on. It had been to keep the truth from being thrown in her face.
All men cheated, but the good ones kept it quiet. That was all Jenn had expected for herself or her friends. Utterly pitiful.
Jenn trudged up the stairs to her place, thinking she’d take a long bath and then sleep the day away. She’d called in sick to work and didn’t feel the least bit guilty about that. She was sick.
But her plans for sleeping away her pain were over as soon as she opened the door and saw someone jumping up from the couch. Anna’s familiar curly black hair was pulled back into a severe braid, and her makeup was smudged. She was the shortest of the three friends, only five-foot-one, but she’d always seemed taller—her energy pulsed from her wherever she went. But not today.
Jenn dropped her purse on the ground and held out her hand. “Give me
the key.”
Anna clutched the key in her hand and didn’t budge.
“I told her everything,” Jenn said. “She’ll probably never talk to either of us again. So give me my goddamn key.”
Anna’s eyes widened with shock. “If you’d let me tell her a month ago—”
“I should’ve told her three months ago, but I’m not going to let my stupidity take the blame for your betrayal. Now give me my key and get out. And don’t ever come here again.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve ruined my life, too, you know. My dad is ashamed of me. Thomas won’t return my calls. You’re my best friend. I need you.”
In the past, Jenn would’ve relented at the sight of Anna’s brown eyes brimming with tears. She couldn’t stand to see people in pain, but right now her own pain was filling her up and there was no room for empathy, so she held her hand higher and watched as Anna skirted the couch.
The key was hot from Anna’s grip when she pressed it into Jenn’s palm.
“Wait,” Jenn said, and hope flashed over Anna’s face. “Tell me about the embezzlement.”
“I can’t. The D.A….”
“Did you help him?”
“No! I didn’t know anything about it. He… We talked about living on an island in the Caribbean. He’d fly one of those little tourist planes and I’d be a chef. We fantasized about how much money we’d need to get by for a little while, but I had no idea he’d— I thought we were just pretending. Jenn, please. I know what I did was—”
“Goodbye, Anna. And don’t you dare call Chloe and try to explain your actions away. It’s bad enough I’ve had to listen to it.”
Anna’s shoulders slumped and she walked to the dining-room table to grab her purse. Even on this awful day, her purse matched her heels. Anna had been the fashion advisor for all of them, and if Jenn and Chloe were still friends after this, there’d be no more daylong shopping trips. It would just be the two of them, wearing out-of-season clothes at restaurants that hadn’t been hot for years. Anna wouldn’t be there to get them the best table or offer the latest Virginia gossip. It would never be the same again.
But Jenn would take that new form of their friendship and hold on with both hands if Chloe gave her the chance.
“I’ll call you in a few weeks,” Anna said on her way out, but Jenn just closed the door. She toed off her shoes and walked carefully to her couch before lowering herself down. The soft leather swallowed her up, muffling the world, still warm from Anna’s body.
Jenn had almost let her best friend marry a man who’d cheated on her. She’d done it because, in the deepest, darkest recesses of her brain, she believed that even if you loved a man and gave him everything, he was going to betray you. Because even the best woman couldn’t be good enough to satisfy a man.
If she didn’t get past that, she’d live her whole life waiting to be betrayed. Waiting to have her heart broken. Like her mom, she’d never demand anything better for herself.
Key still clutched in her hand, Jenn tugged her phone from the pocket of her jeans and called up Elliott’s message. She knew it by heart, of course, but she still listened to every syllable of his awkward words. He wasn’t smooth. He wasn’t charming. He was perfect.
Jenn pushed the call-back button and took a deep, terrified breath.
“Dr. Sullivan,” he snapped. The background of his life was filled with ringing phones and people talking over each other. Before Jenn could speak, he said, “Hold on a second,” and his voice turned away to ask someone to bring a copy of a revised report to his office before three. “Okay,” he said into the phone.
She started to say his name, then changed her mind, intimidated by the official sound of his title. “Um…this is Jenn Castellan.” A statement of fact that sounded so much like a question that she winced.
He didn’t say a word, and she was about to repeat herself when Elliott murmured, “Just a moment.” The sounds around him changed as he moved through his world. Then a door closed and everything went quiet.