Stone Cold [Coming Soon]

Prologue

CADENCE'S POV

"Look, Harry. You can't propose to her..." I rush out, looking at him from across my room with pleading eyes. I love you, I desperately want to tell him, but the words stay buried in the back of my throat.

Harry releases a deep sigh before walking over to me. The sound of his worn out Chelsea boots clacking against the wooden floorboards follow his footsteps. Once he closes the distance between us, the pad of his thumb slowly slides across my cheek, and I close my eyes as another cold tear rolls down my face.

"Why not? I thought you'd be happy for me," Harry states with a frown. "I thought you liked Elaine."

"I-I am happy for you, Harry," I tell him, pausing to control my breathing, "and I-I do like Elaine. It's just... I just want you to be happy with me! I want to be the reason you smile so much it hurts your cheeks. I want to be the person you wake up next to in the morning. I want to be the girl you—"

"—Cadence, I don't understand...where are you going with this?" Harry interjects, eyeing me wearily. He runs his cross-tattooed hand through his hair and desperately searches my brown eyes for answers–answers I don't know how to articulate.

Instead of wasting more time trying to figure out how to put my feelings into words, I do something completely irrational. I stand up on the tips of my toes and press my mouth against Harry's in a rapturous kiss. For the short time that our lips touch, I feel my heart beating mercilessly in my ears and a fireworks show going off in my stomach. The texture of his lips is exactly how I imagined it to be: soft and plump, but the moment is over almost before it even begins. The door to my dorm abruptly swings open, and the space becomes filled with the sound of two giggling females in mid-conversation.

"So then I said to him—Holy shit..."

"Oh my god..."

The sound of Elaine's voice is what causes Harry to pull away from me so fast that I stumble back from him like a deer trying to avoid headlights. A moment of silence falls upon the room, and everyone exchanges looks. Elaine's green eyes dart over to mine, and she stares at me with a mixture of hurt and betrayal on her face. Immediately, I'm flooded with guilt.

Unsurprisingly, Harry is the first one to attempt to break the silence with his words, but he isn't very successful. "Elaine, baby, I–"

"—How could you do this to me?" Is all Elaine says to him before running out of the room, not giving Harry any time to offer a proper explanation.

"Goddammit. Elaine, wait!" Harry shouts before running after her.

Before I have time to second guess my actions, my feet carry me after Harry as well. "Harry, stop for a second. Please," I beg him multiple times as I weave my body in between the college graduates conversing in the halls.

The combination of my cap and gown and high heels make chasing after Harry a difficult task, but I'm grateful I don't have to do it for much longer. After minutes of my incessant pleading, he finally stops running when we exit his housing complex and turns around to face me. His cheeks are flushed, and I can tell how angry he is by the way his nostrils flare and his jaw tightens.

"I-I'm so sorry. I didn't mean any ha–" An apology is on the tip of my tongue, but I barely finish an entire sentence without Harry interrupting me.

"–Save it, Cadence. What the fuck was that back there?!" He curses at me. I flinch from how loud his voice is, feeling my bottom lip tremble. "I may have lost the girl of my dreams because of that little stunt you pulled. God, I can't even stand the sight of you right now," He says with such malice in his voice that I feel my heart combust into a million pieces.

"But Harry, I lo—" I try to tell him, but I discontinue my thought because Harry doesn't waste another moment of his precious time on me and continues to chase after Elaine in the quad. Even though I know I don't deserve anyone's pity for kissing a taken man, all I can focus on is how much this unrequited love hurts as I watch the boy who was never mine run off to another woman.

Graduating from college should have been one of the happiest days of my life, but instead it turned out to be one hell of a nightmare because that was also the day I lost my best friend. If I could turn back the clock to the beginning of senior year and do it all over again, I would. Because maybe, just maybe, if I had told Harry that I loved him, it would be me he'd want to propose to instead of Elaine.

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Please vote and comment. There will be more chapters to come after I finish Behind Closed Doors.