I STILL LOVE YOU, BUT...

CHAPTER 23

IRIS

It's over. I pace the room. He's left me. I sit on the couch and drink vodka straight from the bottle. It stings my lips, but I don't care.

All of this work, and for what? I wanted him. I invested in him. I loved him. I didn't really mean to love him. It just happened. At first, it had been exciting, to take a man from his wife. I'd felt so powerful. It was a heady feeling. But then, I got to know him. He's funny and smart and handsome, and I'd fallen in love.

I'm limp as I replay his words in my head. It's over. We're done.

I still love him. It's a fact I don't like. Despite his cruelty, I still love him.

You're just mad because he doesn't want you anymore, Mama whispers in my head. Don't lie to yourself, my girl. You don't love him. You only love yourself.

"Shut up, Mama!" My scream bounces about the walls.

He's really leaving me. He's still fixated on his ex. He still loves her. He's never moved on from her. Even though she doesn't want him back. Even though she's got a new, better, man in her life.

I cry until I fall asleep.

When I wake, sunlight streams into the sitting room, and my head is pounding. It takes me a minute to remember what has happened. Colin has broken it off. He's left me. It can't be real. I'm more poised, sophisticated, classier, more understanding. I am so perfect for him. I made myself perfect. My phone is still in my hand. I call him, but the call goes unanswered. Where is he?

I think of Amanda, her smug face, and her stupid, successful life. She doesn't deserve any of it. She doesn't deserve Tristan Remington. It's her fault Colin is ending it with me. It's all her fault.

Amanda Barnes is a nobody compared to me. A nothing. Are these men blind or simply idiots to be taken in by that simpering girlish innocence? I am thrice as beautiful as her. I have toned, tight limbs honed from yoga, and the glowing, radiant, smooth face of a woman twenty years younger. I'm her opposite. That waifish and pale shadow of a girl has no substance. She can't hold a candle to me. How dare Colin who, after slaking his thirst and his appetites on me, just leave me so callously, walk out of that door so indifferently?

The crushing black jealousy makes it difficult to draw breath, heavy stones pelting upon my chest.

I rage all day long, pacing my apartment like a woman gone wild. I pull at my hair. I vomit in the toilet. I call Colin's phone. He never answers.

It's over, and I'm alone. I'm forty-three, bereft, broken, a failure.

Causing a man to stray is the easiest thing in the world. But keeping him is a different story. Keeping him is the hard part. There has to be something I can do. There just has to be. I grab my keys and jump in the car, head to the office. Colin has to be in there.

His car isn't in its usual parking slot. Fuck. Where is he?

I burst into his room.

Cora looks up from her computer, startled.

"Where is he?" I hiss.

She opens her eyes wide.

"I'mmm nooot at liberrrty to saaay," she smiles sweetly at me.

"Stop playing games with me, you bitch," I grit. "I know what you're up to."

"Yooou dooon't loook well, Irissss," she coos. "Maaaybe, yooou shooould gooo hooome."

"You are no competition for me," I spit.

She creases her brow.

"I dooon't knooow whaaat yooou mean."