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I stroked the furry head on my lap, tears still streaming down from my face.
“You understand, don’t you, Bud?” I asked him, desperate for someone to believe I had done the right thing.
He let out a low whine and licked my hand in reassurance. I laughed a little at that and hugged him a little tighter.
I’m gonna be okay. It’s tough right now and I’m a little beat up but I will be okay, I told myself.
I swiped at the tear tracks on my face and gave Buddy a wobbly smile.
“I’ll just wash up for a while,” I told him, standing up and heading for the bathroom. “The last thing I need right now is this hangover.”
Buddy barked a little and followed me into the small bathroom. I was just about to splash water on my face when I saw it.
Oliver’s mobile phone sat there on the shelf, just beside a bottle of hand soap.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
OLIVER
It hurt likehell.
It honestly did.
I had almost forgotten what it felt like to hurt this much, to want to rip your beating heart out of your chest just to make itstop.
The last time I had felt like this had been twelve years ago, when I hugged Amanda for the last time before I had to leave for London. Even then, it had not hurt as much as it did now.
Maybe… Maybe if I wasn’t so fucking happy just a few hours ago, it wouldn’t have hurt this much.
If I had not flown so high, I wouldn’t have fallen so hard.
I ran as fast as I can, as far as I could, hoping to put as much distance as I could between myself and Amanda, because I could not trust myself to act rationally at this point. Half of me wanted to pound her door down and beg her to reconsider, and the other half wanted nothing to do with her and the pain that came with it.
Why should I give her more ammunition to hurt me with?
I didn’t notice that I had arrived at the park until I fell onto one of the stone benches in exhaustion. It was still cool from last night, but it did nothing to dampen the raging pain in my chest.
I loved Amanda—I really did. It would not have hurt me this badly if I didn’t but… Oh God, I loved that woman with every piece of my soul.
Last night was not a mistake for me but arevelation. I had been so happy even though I knew at the back of my mind that it was the fragile sort of happiness, the sort that could be taken away from you in an instant. I had felt like I had died and gone to paradise and when I got up, I knew I wanted to doanythingto make this beautiful, fragile piece of heaven work between us.
But it was like a dream in a soap bubble and now, that bubble had burst open.
I braced my elbows on my knees and covered my face with my hands. I didn’t feel like living today.
“Oliver?”
I looked up to find Julian in shorts and a dark blue shirt, perspiration beading on his forehead and trickling down his face. He took off his earphones and gave me a worried look. He took a swig off the blue drinking-bottle he carried and walked towards me, his running shoes crunching on the ground.
“You look like shit,” he remarked quietly, sitting down on the park bench beside me. “What the hell happened?”
I groaned and buried my face in my hands. “Amanda did.”
A terse silence draped over us and for a moment, I could hear the birds and feel the morning sunshine on my skin, but it felt like my world had gone dark and lifeless in the span of a few minutes.
“She found out the truth about her asshole boyfriend,” I finally said.
Julian looked a little confused. “So? Shouldn’t that make you happy because she finally knows you’re telling the truth?”
