Chapter 33
COLT
Iwas reviewing the final seating chart for the wedding when my office door burst open. Frankie stormed in, her face flushed, her eyes bright with anger. And right behind her, trying to keep up, was Hallie.
“Frankie, please,” Hallie was saying. “Just let me talk.”
“No.” Frankie turned to face her, and the fury on my sister’s face made me stand up from my desk. “He needs to hear this. Now.”
“Hear what?” I looked between them, confusion mixing with the first tendrils of dread. They had been friends five minutes ago. Now, Frankie looked like she was going to rip Hallie’s arms off. I had never seen my sister so angry. “What’s going on?”
“Tell him,” Frankie demanded, turning back to Hallie. “Tell him why you really signed the contract.”
Hallie’s face had gone pale. “Frankie, I was going to tell him.”
“When? After the wedding? After you’d gotten all your money and broken his heart?” Frankie’s voice rose. “Tell him, Hallie. Or I will.”
My chest tightened. “Someone tell me what the fuck is happening.”
Frankie turned to me. I saw genuine hurt in her eyes. For me. I knew that look. My little sister would slay dragons for me, and right now, that was exactly what she looked like she was trying to do.
Dread and fear churned in my stomach. All my senses suddenly felt more alive. Like I was standing in the forest facing down a grizzly that would tear me apart. For some reason, I just knew I was about to be shredded to pieces.
I tried to brace myself. But it was coming too fast. I didn’t have time to lock up my heart and steel my nerves for the onslaught coming straight for me.
“Hallie didn’t sign the contract to help you clean up your reputation!
” Frankie’s words were half-shouting, half-sobbing.
“She signed it to get revenge on you. She was planning to make you fall in love with her and then publicly dump you at the end of the contract. Break your heart the way you apparently broke hers in high school.”
The words didn’t make sense at first. They just hung in the air, disconnected from reality.
“That’s not true.” I looked at Hallie. “Right?”
Hallie’s eyes were filled with tears, but she didn’t deny it.
She didn’t fucking deny it.
“Tell me it’s not true,” I said, my voice rough. “Hallie. Tell me.”
“It was true,” she whispered. “At first. That was my original plan.”
The floor dropped out from under me.
It was true.
Everything—the lunch she’d brought me, the dinner she’d cooked, the way she’d looked at me, the way she’d let me hold her—all of it had been part of some elaborate revenge scheme. She had manipulated me.
I almost laughed. I was the Casanova that wooed hundreds of women. I was the one that made them feel like they were special just long enough for me to get laid.
And holy fuck, now Hallie had done it to me.
But I never, ever let any of my conquests believe I loved them. I played them and they knew damn well I was turning on the charm.
Hallie set out to purposely destroy me.
What. The. Fuck.
“You were planning to hurt me,” I said flatly. “This whole time.”
“No. Not this whole time. I changed my mind.”
“When?” The word came out sharp as a whip. “When did you change your mind, Hallie? Last night? Last week? After you’d already gotten me to fall for you?”
“I don’t know exactly when.” She took a step toward me, but I moved back. “It was gradual. Forever ago. The more I got to know you, the more I realized—”
“The more you realized you could hurt me even worse?” My laugh was bitter. “God, I’m such an idiot.”
“No, that’s not—”
“How could it be forever ago?” Frankie cut in, her voice sharp. “It’s only been six weeks, Hallie. Six weeks! Did you have your come-to-Jesus moment yesterday? A week ago? Two weeks ago? You’re a fraud. And a mean one, too.”
I stared at Hallie, trying to reconcile the woman I thought I knew with this revelation. I thought about every moment we’d shared.
Had any of it been real?
Or had she just been a really good actress, playing her part to perfection?
The doubt crept in like poison, and with it, all my old defenses triggered. The walls I’d spent all this time building, the ones Hallie had somehow managed to slip past, slammed back into place.
When I looked at her now, all I could see was someone who wanted to hurt me.
Alarm bells rang in my head.
Danger. Danger. Run.
I had been hurt enough.
“Colt, please,” Hallie said, moving toward me. “Can we talk? Just the two of us? I can explain.”
“Explain how you’ve been lying to me from day one?” My voice was cold now, detached. “How you’ve been playing me this entire time?”
“I wasn’t playing you.” She stopped, tears streaming down her face. “Please. Just let me explain.”
“I think I’ve heard everything I need to hear,” I said. “Please go.”
“Colt, just wait.”
“Get out of my office.”
“Please don’t do this.” Her voice broke. “Don’t shut me out. Not now.”
Frankie moved toward the door. “Get out, Hallie. He doesn’t want to talk to you.”
“Colt! Please!”
“If you won’t leave, I will,” I said, grabbing my coat. “I need air.”
I pushed past them both, heading for the elevators. I could hear Hallie calling my name, hear her footsteps behind me, but I didn’t stop. Didn’t turn around.
I pressed the elevator button repeatedly, willing it to come faster.
Hallie caught up to me. “Just listen. Just give me five minutes to explain.”
The elevator dinged and the doors opened. I stepped inside, and Hallie followed.
The last thing I wanted was to be trapped in a steel box with the woman that just stabbed me in the heart. Did she know that? Did she know she just killed any shot at love for me? I would never—could never—go through heartbreak again.
It would destroy me.
Frankie tried to get on too, but the doors started closing. She slammed her hand against them, but they shut in her face.
“Get off at the next floor,” I said, staring at the numbers.
“No.” Hallie hit the emergency stop button, and the elevator jerked to a halt between floors. “Not until you listen to me.”
“There’s nothing to listen to.”
“Yes, there is.” She moved in front of me, forcing me to look at her. “You’re right. I signed the contract for revenge. I was hurt and angry about what happened in high school, and I wanted to hurt you back.”
“Well, congratulations.” My voice was flat. “Mission accomplished.”
“Bull shit! I didn’t go through with it!” Her hands gripped my arms. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I changed my mind. I fell for you, Colt. Actually fell for you.”
“How convenient. Right before the wedding. Right before your next big payday.”
“It wasn’t convenient. It’s actually been a giant pain in the ass.” She was crying openly now. “Every day I kept meaning to tell you the truth, but I was scared. Terrified you’d look at me exactly the way you’re looking at me right now.”
“And how am I looking at you?”
“Like you hate me.”
I should tell her that wasn’t true. That I could never hate her. But the words stuck in my throat.
Because maybe I did hate her. A little. For making me believe this was real.
For shattering my chance to ever fall in love.
Have a family. Grow old with someone. Because she ruined that.
I would never trust anyone again. I would never open my heart again.
I could already feel the damn thing icing over.
Soon, it would just be the thing that pumped blood through my body.
Nothing but a necessary, functioning organ.
“I need you to understand where I was coming from,” Hallie continued.
“I was seventeen when you stood me up. Humiliated. Everyone in my life made me feel like I was stupid for thinking you could ever want me. That hurt stuck with me for years, Colt. It shaped how I saw myself. It destroyed my self-confidence. I looked at myself in the mirror and tried to see what exactly it was that you didn’t like.
I looked at my boobs, butt, belly and saw every imperfection.
I felt ugly. It took me a long time to accept myself for who I was, and if handsome boys didn’t like me or want me, so be it. ”
“So you decided to do the same thing to me? That’s your logic?”
“Well, to be clear, you hired me to pretend all this. My plan came after, when it was clear you had no idea you had stood me up when we were kids.” She grabbed my hands.
I let her, too numb to pull away. “I was angry, but in my defense, screw you for ghosting me back then for a better party, and screw you for forgetting who I was. You did one shitty thing after another. So I wanted to do something shitty back.”
She squeezed my hands. “But then I got to know you. The real you. And I realized you weren’t the asshole guy who ditched me without a second thought. You were just a person who made a mistake when he was a kid.”
“When did you realize this?” I asked. “You’ve had plenty of opportunities to tell me the truth, and you chose not to.”
“I know. And that was wrong. But, Colt, I think I’m in love with you. I don’t think it. I know it. And I don’t want to hurt you. I never want to hurt you. Not anymore.”
The words that should have made my heart soar felt hollow. Because how could I trust them? How could I trust anything she said now?
The elevator dinged. The doors started to open on the ground floor. I pulled my hands from hers and stepped out into the lobby.
“Colt, don’t walk away.”
“I need time,” I said without turning around. “To think. To figure out what the fuck I’m supposed to do now.”
“The wedding is in six days.”
“I’m aware.”
“What are you saying? Are you calling it off? Should I still show up?”
I finally turned to look at her. She stood there in the elevator doorway, tears running down her face, looking broken and beautiful and like everything I’d thought I wanted.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I don’t know anything anymore.”
I walked away, through the lobby, out onto the street. People moved around me like water around a stone, and I just kept walking with no destination in mind.
My phone started buzzing in my pocket. Frankie, probably. Or Hallie. Or both.
I ignored it.
All I could think about was the past six weeks.
Had any of it been real?
The lunch she’d brought me. Had that been part of the plan?
The dinner she’d cooked. Part of the plan?
I thought about the nightmares that had stopped. The way I’d felt like I was finally healing. The way I’d told Frankie just this afternoon that I was letting my heart lead because I was sure Hallie had feelings too.
God, I was such a fucking idiot.
I’d fallen for someone who only wanted to hurt me.
Who’d seen me as a target, not a person.
Who’d played me so perfectly I’d never even suspected.
It was the best form of karma ever. The universe should be proud.
All those women in my past were probably going to give her a trophy.
Make a statue in her likeness. Finally, someone took down the playboy.
I believed in love once, and it had been ripped away from me in the most brutal way possible.
At least with Lauren, I hadn’t seen it coming. Hadn’t had time to brace for impact.
With Hallie, I’d been looking right at the car crash and had driven straight into it anyway.