Page 116 of Fake it for Keeps

Twitter was full of speculation. Instagram stories with screenshots of that brief statement. Think pieces about what could have happened. Gossip sites with headlines like “Billionaire’s Engagement Implodes Days Before Wedding” and “What Went Wrong Between Colt Jesson and His Mystery Fiancée?”

Someone had snapped a photo of me and Colt right when the elevator opened in the lobby. Me with my mascara streaking down my face and him looking mad as hell. I cringed at the picture. It was not a moment I wanted memorialized forever.

The comments were brutal.

She probably cheated on him.

Gold digger exposed.

He dodged a bullet.

Colt deserves better.

I turned off my phone and put my head in my hands. I was no longer Hallie Bellrose. I felt like my identity had been erased. I would now be known as Colt Jesson’s ex-fiancée. The woman who’d somehow screwed up the engagement of the year. And now I was jobless. Single. Broken-hearted.

I’d lost everything.

And I deserved it.

The train came, and I boarded it in a daze, finding a window seat and pressing my forehead against the cold glass. I thought about Colt. About Lauren. About how he’d been carrying that loss since he was nineteen years old.

About how I had made it so much worse. I made him think it was safe to love again. Made him open his heart. Made him believe I was different.

And then I’d proven I was exactly what he’d always feared, someone who would hurt him.

Frankie was right. I was heartless.

The train pulled away from the station. I watched the city disappear behind me.

I thought about that night he had the nightmare. I groaned and a fresh wave of tears started. My poor man. He was carrying so much pain.

He had hurt me too, but that had been when he was young and dumb. I was old enough to know better. I had no excuse.

The train ride felt eternal. By the time I got off at my stop and took a cab to the beach house, it was dark. The house looked even more run-down in the winter night, but I was still glad to be there.

I let myself in and immediately went to start a fire in the fireplace. My hands shook so badly I could barely strike a match. So much of my life was just me fumbling around in the dark, trying to figure things out.

Once the fire was going, I curled up on the couch wrapped in blankets and let myself fall apart. I cried for Colt. For the pain I caused him. For the trust I’d broken.

I cried for Lauren, a girl I’d never met but whose loss had shaped the man I loved.

I cried for myself. For the years of torment I’d suffered after his rejection. For the revenge plan that had seemed so justified and now felt so cruel. For the happiness I’d found and destroyed with my own hands.

My phone—which I’d turned back on—kept buzzing with messages and calls.

Finally, I looked. Hallie and April had called sixteen times between them. My mother had called twelve times. There were texts from numbers I didn’t recognize. And one from Della at the Faux agency, probably wanting to discuss the very public implosion of her most high-profile contract.

But nothing from Colt. I’d destroyed us so completely that he couldn’t even bear to text me.

I thought about the wedding that was supposed to happen in a few days. The dress I’d never wear. All of it, gone.

And it was my fault.

I sat there in my father’s beach house, the place I’d wanted so desperately to restore, and realized that all the money in the world couldn’t fix what I’d broken.

I thought about going back to the city, but I couldn’t. Not yet.

Maybe not for days. Not until Valentine’s Day passed and the wedding that should have been was just a memory.

Maybe not until the media moved on to the next scandal and forgot about me entirely.

I was hiding. And I knew it was cowardly.

But I didn’t care.

I turned off my phone, pulled the blankets tighter around myself, and stared into the dying fire.

Tomorrow, I’d figure out what to do next.

Tomorrow, I’d face the consequences of my actions.

Tomorrow, I’d start trying to put the pieces of my life back together.

But tonight, I just wanted to hide.

And mourn everything I’d lost.

Including myself.