Page 105 of Unscripted

No, it was the other gate, the one that led to the front driveway, that had swung open on rusty hinges.

I turned toward it, and my stomach sank.

Gavin was standing there. His eyes were gleaming, and his eyebrow was quirked as if to say, “Isn’t this funny, what we’ve gotten ourselves into?” He was notably less conciliatory than twenty minutes before.

“You’re not allowed to be here,” I said, not wanting to have any kind of conversation with him again.

“I know, I know,” he said, holding his hands up as if to profess some kind of innocence.

He walked toward me and stopped when he was just a few inches away.

“I just wanted to say that I meant what I said in there; I really do miss you.”

“Gavin—”

“I know. I know I messed up. What I did was unforgivable. I just . . . ”

He was so close that I was enveloped in his familiar scent, a crisp laundry smell that used to make my stomach flutter. Now, it had my insides turning sour.

“I still love you, Poppy,” he said.

He had somehow stepped even closer, and before I could think, before I could move away, he leaned in and kissed me.

I would have pushed him away immediately, would have slapped him or yelled at him, told him to fuck off back to America.

I would have done any of those things, perhaps even all of them, had one thing not happened at that exact moment.

When Gavin’s lips pressed against mine, the gate behind me opened. I heard the familiar creek of sun-dried wood, heard the person who was walking through call out my name.

Heard as Callum’s breath caught when he saw Gavin and me together.

It was a horrible, awful comedy of errors, all happening in the blink of an eye.

I pulled away from Gavin and spun around toward Callum.

I wish I hadn’t. I wish I had run away, booked it out of there at that moment. Or been struck by lightning on the spot. Anything not to have to see the look on Callum’s face.

He still had the ghost of a smile across his lips, a cruel reminder of how perfect everything had been only seconds before. But his eyes told me everything I needed to know. Hurt flashed across them, followed by confusion.

And then, worst of all, cold indifference.

I could see, in real time, his guard shooting up, locking into place with me on the other side of it.

It was like looking at the Callum of six weeks ago.

I immediately felt sick, a rush of nausea rolling over me. This can’t be happening. It was all a mistake, a misunderstanding.

But Callum didn’t wait around for an explanation. He simply turned and walked back into the garden.

I went to follow him, but Gavin grabbed my arm.

“Don't worry about that guy, he’s a loser,” he said, as if that was reason enough for me to completely disregard Callum and what just happened.

“Gavin,” I said, yanking out of his grasp. There was so much I still wanted to say to him. So much I wanted him to own up to. But right now I could feel the clock ticking down on my relationship with Callum. I could feel it slipping through my grasp the longer I stood here and didn’t go after him.

So I summed everything up in just two words.

“Fuck off.”