After He Mistook Me For Her, I Walked Out

Chapter 3 Second Best

"Vivi. You saw, didn't you?"

It took him a long while to work up to the question.

I walked around the bed and pulled the frame out from under his pillow. "You came after me because of her."

Weston's eyes stayed locked on my wrist like he expected me to smash it against the floor.

After that, there was nothing left for me to misunderstand.

His reaction had already answered everything.

I set the frame back down on the bed, and he picked it up with both hands like it was worth more than anything else in the room.

He gave me a bitter smile. "Vivi, Seraphina is gone."

"And if she wasn't?"

Weston didn't answer.

So I said it for him, the part he had buried. "If Seraphina were alive, you'd have gone after her. With any luck, you'd have married her, and the two of you would have had a beautiful life."

"Weston."

I turned my face away so he wouldn't see the tears break loose.

"When you look at me, do you see Seraphina?"

He sighed. "Vivi, do you have to keep digging? What we have is good. Why ruin it?"

"It isn't good!"

The words tore out of me until my throat gave out.

Every kind thing he had done in three years had been meant for her, and the weight of that pressed down until I could barely breathe.

"Weston."

He looked back at me perfectly calm, and next to him, I felt like a kid throwing a tantrum over candy she was never going to get.

I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. "Let's just end it here."

The air in that room had gotten too thick for me to stand another second of it.

I didn't want to know how he had met Seraphina, or what she had asked of him before she died.

All I wanted was to get out.

I knocked the frame over as I ran for the door, and his voice pinned me where I stood.

"Vivienne, do you have to act like a child? No wonder nobody likes you. You aren't fit to stand in the same room as Seraphina.

"Be jealous of her all you want, but there's a limit."

My hand cracked across his face, and the mark came up red and swollen within seconds.

He shoved me back, and my forehead caught the corner of the table.

Blood ran down my temple one drop at a time.

Outside the window, the setting sun bled across the sky.

Something inside me was bleeding right along with it.

Weston, we were done.