Page 152 of Buy Back My Love

She licked my chin, and I laughed. “Exactly.”

I clipped her leash on and took her around the neighborhood. By the time we made it back, she had finally stopped trying to fight every leaf that blew across the sidewalk.

After I fed her and cleaned up the water she somehow managed to splash halfway across the kitchen floor, I took a shower.

By eight, I was in clean pajamas stretched across my bed with Holly lying over my legs like she paid rent. I picked up my phone and opened Instagram without thinking much about it.

The first post on my feed was JB. My thumb stopped.

For a second, I couldn’t even make sense of what I was looking at. There was a huge WILL YOU MARRY ME? sign behind him, rose petals all over the floor, candles everywhere, and JB was down on one knee in front of Hannah while she stood there crying with both hands over her mouth.

I stared at the picture longer than I meant to before swiping. The next one was Hannah holding her hand toward the camera, showing off the ring while JB stood behind her smiling. Then a picture of them kissing.

My stomach dropped.

“No fucking way.”

Holly lifted her head, but I barely noticed. I swiped back to the first picture and stared at it again like maybe I had misunderstood what I was seeing.

I hadn’t.

JB had proposed to Hannah on Valentine’s Day.

Last month, this same man had pictures from our gender reveal all over social media. Him standing behind me, his hand on my stomach, both of us cutting into that blue cake while everybody celebrated our son. Now he was on one knee asking Hannah to marry him.

I locked my phone, then unlocked it again a few seconds later even though I had no idea what I expected to change. The post was still there. Same pictures. Same ring. Same man I had spent half my life loving.

The part that pissed me off most was how stupid I felt. I had broken up with him. I had told him over and over that we weren’t getting back together. I refused his gifts, refused the shop, and told him he could be a father to our baby without being my man. So why the hell did seeing him ask Hannah to marry him feel like somebody had kicked me in the chest?

Maybe because fifteen years didn’t disappear just because I finally got tired. Maybe because some stupid part of me had still believed I was the person JB would always come back to. And maybe because he had spent all this time making damn sure I believed it.

My phone started vibrating in my hand, and when I looked down, Anika’s name was on the screen. I let it ring, and before the screen even went dark, a text from Wren came through.

You seen it?

Then Nina.

Lee call me

Anika called again. I stared at the screen until it stopped.

Of course they had seen it. Everybody probably had by now, and somehow that made the whole thing worse. I wasn’t just sitting in my room feeling stupid by myself. Anybody who knew our history could look at the same damn post and do the math.

January, me and JB all over social media at our gender reveal. February, him down on one knee proposing to Hannah.

I turned on Do Not Disturb and tossed my phone beside me. Holly crawled higher up the bed until she was pressed against my hip, and I rubbed behind her ear while trying to convince myself I was fine.

“I’m good,” I told her.

She looked up at me.

“I am.”

She kept staring.

“Mind your business.”

That lasted maybe two minutes before I reached for my phone again. I didn’t want to talk to Anika. I definitely didn’t want to get on FaceTime with Wren and Nina and have them staring at my face trying to figure out how hurt I was. But I still needed to talk to somebody, and without really thinking about it, my thumb went straight to Van’s name.