Hmmm, what goes better with vodka? Snickers or Mars bar?

I weigh my options carefully and then pull both chocolate bars and a can of Pringles out of the hotel mini bar, just to be safe. As an afterthought, I also pull out a second tiny bottle of vodka. Clearly one isn’t going to cut it.

How did tonight go so horribly, spectacularly wrong? Me and my big fucking mouth. It was one thing to have feelings for Jace. One thing to consider telling him about said feelings. Another thing entirely to blurt out in front of his brother that this whole engagement was fake.

The look on Trent’s face when he came out of the private room and overheard us talking in the vestibule… I’ll never forget that look for as long as I live. Anger and surprise and … disappointment.

I know Jace already feels like a failure and a fuck-up in his brothers’ eyes. And here I’ve gone and made everything ten times worse. I don’t know how he’s going to fix things with them now — not after I’d wrecked it so irrevocably.

There’s no way I can face any of them at the wedding tomorrow — and I know it’s better if Jace just stays and speaks to them on his own. Maybe he can tell them that I was dying and my last wish was to go to a strangers’ wedding?

I shake my head, wiping a fresh round of tears from my eyes, and crack open one of the little bottles of vodkas. It’s barely more than a shot but goddamn does it burn when it hits the back of my throat. I chase it with half the Snickers bar and a handful of barbecue Pringles.

I had intended to get on a flight tonight, but both airlines I tried told me they were booked. The earliest they could get me on a flight was tomorrow afternoon. Since there was no way I wanted to have to face Jace tonight, I had gone downstairs to the front desk instead and begged them to find me a new room. Now I was on the sixth floor, just a few floors away from our original room.

Jace didn’t have to know — it was better if he thought I was gone. Then he didn’t have to worry about me. He’d called a few times, but that was probably just to find out where I was. Once he sees the note I’d left, I figure he’ll stop calling. He’ll see that this was for the best.

I turn on the television and flick around until I find a Pawn Stars marathon and settle in. I finish off the second little bottle of vodka and the Mars bar and by that point I’m feeling disgusting on top of sad. Oh, if only Jace could see me now, I think bitterly.

When the fourth episode of Pawn Stars finishes and the channel switches over to an informercial for a bizarre exercise device called the Ab Rebel, I click off the television. I turn off the lamp beside the bed too, hoping I’ll be able to sleep, but instead I just lay there and stare up at the ceiling.

I feel like I just picked up a handful of sand and watched every last grain slip from between my fingers. Things with Jace had been … well, even though they’d been fake, they’d been perfect somehow. When he held me in his arms, when he kissed me, when we compared childhood scars and when we laughed and when we ate cold eggs at the buffet downstairs — those things had felt real. They had felt staggeringly, heart-stoppingly real.

But no. And even if they had been — even if Jace felt an inkling of what I felt — I had blown it. He’d never want to talk to me again, not after how I screwed things up so badly for him.

I fumble in the dark and grab my phone off the nightstand. As soon as I pick it up, the screen light comes on, nearly blinding me. I know the phone hasn’t rung, but I still have to check.

But no. There are no new missed calls.

Jace had called twice earlier, and left one message, which I hadn’t listened to. As I expected, the calls had stopped right around the time I figure he would have gotten back to the hotel. Which means he saw my note and realized I was right, and that he was better off without me here.

Which is what I wanted.

Right?

Ugh.

I drop the phone back on the nightstand and sling my arm over my eyes. My eyes are still damp from crying, and I can feel my eyelashes wet against my skin. I take my arm away and then stare up at the ceiling of the dark hotel room some more. I stare for a long, long, long time. By the time sleep finally comes, the sky is turning the same shade of pink as the dress I’d been wearing at a dinner that seemed forever ago now.

* * *

I’m jolted awake just a couple of hours later by the brash ring of my phone, and then the crash as it vibrates its way across the nightstand and onto the floor.

I reach down for the phone and scoop it up. Once again, the light from the screen blinds me, but I squint to make out the time. Jesus, it’s not even eight in the morning yet.

I look at the call display. Jace. Seeing his name there, spelled out in blinding white letters, guts me. Why is he calling me so early? Or so late? Is he okay?

My mind immediately starts turning through every horrific possibility — that he stayed out all night getting drunk, that he’s hurt, that something happened to him after I ran off last night.

Even though I don’t want to, I hesitantly tap the phone to answer it.

“Hello?” My voice is still hoarse with sleep, despite the adrenalin coursing through me.

“Where are you?”

“I’m in bed.”

“Open the damn door. I need to talk to you.”

My heart races. If he came to find me, then maybe … maybe he doesn’t completely hate me.

I throw my legs over the side of the bed and creep over to the door. I stand there for a moment, trying to see if I can hear him outside the door. There isn’t a sound.

I’m wearing the world’s tiniest pajamas, so I open the door only a crack, peering out into the silent hallway.

My heart sinks. He isn’t there.

“Where are you?” I breathe into the phone.

“I’m standing outside your door,” he says impatiently.

Confusion rushes through me. I open the door again, throwing it wider this time, not caring if I’m putting on a show for my neighbors. I look both ways down the hall. No Jace.

“No you’re not.”

“Yes, I am. Trust me. I had to slip your doorman a hundred bucks just to let me up.”

My doorman? My …

Oh. God.

“You’re in New York?” My voice is barely more than a whisper. I don’t want to believe it.

“Yes, I told you, I’m right outside your…” He pauses. “Wait, where are you?”

“I’m in Chicago,” I mumble. “At our hotel.”

“Your note said you were going to New York.”

“I tried, but I couldn’t get a flight.”

“I, apparently, did not have that problem.” His voice is filled with bitterness.

I close the door and slump against it, letting myself sink all the way down to the floor.

Jace is in New York, chasing after me.

I’m in Chicago, hiding from him.

And the wedding is today.