Nas doesn’t say anything, because there’s nothing he can say. We both know it’s true, and there’s no talking his way out of it. Not even an author as amazing as Nathan Booker can conjure up enough words to get away with this. His shoulders slump and his eyes drop to the floor. Everything that made him sexy and hot leaves his body in the blink of an eye, and I may as well be looking at a corpse. He has no life left in him. That makes two of us.

“It was always about you, Nas,” I go on, fully crying now. “You can say what you want about having feelings for me now, but throughout most of our time together, you didn’t give a fuck. All you wanted was to use me and make money off it, while silencing my voice the way you did all the others. Well, you can rest comfortably knowing I wouldn’t sell this story to anybody for all the money in the world. I want nothing to do with you after this. As far as Heather is concerned, if you’re thinking of going after her for telling me about you, you may as well try to ruin me too, because I’ll be right there in her corner if you do. She’ll have my support, and the support of all the other women you fucked over while you made millions. I’ll make sure of that.”

With a face covered in tears, I reach down and close Nas’s laptop, putting it back into sleep mode. Nas pinches his lips together, and I’m pretty sure I see tears in his eyes, but they never fall, and I don’t care. It wouldn’t matter if he cried enough to drown us both in this office, because no amount of tears can repair the damage he has done to me. I take a step forward, and he moves to the side, granting me access to the door behind him. We both know this is the end.

“All things considered, I guess you got the title right,” I say, wiping my face as I shuffle over to the door and end up next to Nas. “A Lesson in Ruin. I’ve learned a valuable lesson about trust, and you definitely ruined everything for us both. Goodbye, Nas.”