Prologue
Phoebe
“Ilove you,” he said, waving the explicit photograph of him with another woman around. “This? It means nothing.”
The words fell from him with ease, like always. My boyfriend had no regard for my feelings or the damage he’d caused, and he never would. The only thing he cared about were the games he played. Games I’d grown tired of. Games that always ended with me being the injured party whether I’d agreed to play or not.
Even now, he expected me to fight to hold onto him.
Instead, I turned and walked out of his bedroom, the visuals of another woman on top of him pulsating through my mind like a painful sore I couldn’t ease.
“Woah, woah, woah! Phoebe, wait! There’s no need to overreact,” he called out, chasing after me as I charged down the staircase of his home.
I came to an abrupt stop halfway down and glanced over my shoulder at him, unable to believe the man I'd spent the last three years with was trying to makemefeel like the unreasonable party here, despite the solid piece of evidence inhis grip. Evidence he'd felt comfortable enough to keep in his nightstand. As though having it next to his bed, which I'd shared with him only last night, brought an extra layer of enticing danger to this already messed-up game he’d been playing without my consent.
“You believe me, don't you?” he asked, taking a step down to me, moving into a comfort zone he relished, where he thought he could force me to submit. “Babe?”
“Who is she?” I said through gritted teeth.
“Who is who?”
“Don't do that, Rob. Treating me as though I'm stupid is almost as much of a betrayal as realising you’ve been fucking another woman and keeping pictures of her riding your dick in your nightstand.”
“Phoebe!” he scolded. My boyfriend of too many wasted years had always hated women using curse words. Rob liked his ladies to be ladies. Polite. Unassuming. All those things by day, then a vixen by night. He had his rules, and he made sure they were obeyed by all those around him whether they were ready to acquiesce or not.
I’d submitted to this fool for long enough.
“Whoisshe?” I repeated, my teeth grinding together.
“What does it matter who she is?”
“It doesn’t.” I shrugged. “I'm just hoping she at least matters enough for you to choose her over us. It's one thing to cheat on me with someone who may actually mean something to you one day. It's another to do it with someone whose name you don't even remember.”
“Babe, come on.” He reached out to touch my arm, but I dodged his attempt at affection, and his sigh of frustration filled the air. “You know you’ve always been more of a take it slow kinda girl while I’ve been the guy who chases storms. I don’tknow why you’re acting like this is such an issue when it doesn’t need to be.”
“You can hear the words coming out of your mouth, right?” If I hadn’t had so much anger tearing through me, I’d have laughed at his audacity. “You’re out of your goddamn mind.”
“We can get past this. We can get back to being us.”
“You think there's an ‘us’after this? You really believe I think so little of myself to allow you to ever come near me again or continue this... this... joke of a relationship we were apparently in, don’t you?”
“Were?” He scowled. “You’re going to make me pay for a drunken mistake? We're young?—”
“We’re twenty-three, Rob! We’re not kids.”
“We don’thavekids, either, and it’s not like we’re married. Jeez. These things happen at our age. Better now than in ten years’ time, don’t you think?”
“Wow.” I shook my head, unable to recognise him anymore. “I guess congratulations are in order.”
“For what?”
“You sound just like your father.”
That was all it took. Six words spoken freely for his jaw to set and his eyes to narrow like I’d been the one to cheat here. “You'd better be careful what you say,” he warned.
“Or else? What's your next surprise, Rob? A slap to the face? Wasn’t that your father’s go-to move, too?”
The muscles in his jaw twitched, and his nostrils flared. “You're emotional, I get it, but don't push me too far, Phoebe.”
