Chapter 2

My friend and I stayed out late.

When Blake got home and found I wasn't there, he called seven or eight times. I didn't feel like dealing with him, so I ignored my phone.

It was one in the morning when I walked through the door.

He was still up, sitting on the couch with a grim expression. When he smelled the alcohol on me, his frown deepened.

“Do you have any idea how worried I've been?”

“You don't answer my calls or my texts, and it turns out you've just been out drinking?”

“Nora, do you even care that I'm your boyfriend?”

I almost laughed.

Had he ever treated me like his girlfriend?

He'd lied to me for two years. Nearly eight hundred days of watching me make a fool of myself for his entertainment.

How often had he secretly laughed at how stupid I was?

I took off my shoes and gave him a cold look.

“I didn't get the promotion. I felt awful. Is it really so strange that I went out for a drink?”

I walked past him and sat down at the other end of the couch.

His expression faltered, as though it had only just occurred to him that I was hurting. He checked his temper and softened his voice a little.

“It's one job. You didn't get it this time. Try again next year. What's there to be so upset about?”

Of course he could shrug it off.

He was the eldest grandson of the Whitmore family. The company I worked for was only one of the businesses he owned.

I'd grown up in an ordinary family. For that job, I'd worked more all-nighters than I could count, written proposal after proposal, and been chewed out by my boss again and again.

Once, I'd collapsed from exhaustion and ended up in the hospital. Even with an IV in my arm, I'd kept working on my laptop from the bed.

Blake knew all of that.

He just didn't care. Not about the work I'd put in. Not even about me.

My nose stung. Before I could stop myself, I was crying.

That finally rattled him.

“Baby, don't cry.”

“I didn't mean to snap at you.”

“I couldn't reach you. I was scared something had happened. That's why I got upset.”

“It's because I love you. Don't be mad at me, okay?”

He'd told me he loved me so many times over those two years, and I'd believed him every time.

None of it had been true.

He was a liar, through and through.

My career and my relationship had both fallen apart. The more I thought about it, the harder I cried.

Blake held me and kept trying to soothe me.

When I'd finally cried myself out, he used makeup remover to clean the streaks off my face. Then he carried me to bed.

He played the perfect boyfriend through every moment of it.

If I hadn't known the truth, his tenderness would have moved me.

But I did know. I knew everything.