A petty part of me wanted to get Dean’s attention, even though I knew that was backwards. He’d made his mind up, and convincing him he was missing out wasn’t going to change it.

For the past two days, I felt like I was doing my best impression of a burglar. I crept toward corners, listening before emerging in case I might run into him. I got to bed as early as I could and pulled the blankets practically over my head.

To his credit, Dean seemed to understand I wanted nothing to do with him and hadn’t made any attempts to talk to me. He came in quietly to the room, usually late at night, showered, and got into his bed without a word. He didn’t even turn the lights on, which resulted in the mildly hilarious number of times he bumped into things on the way to his bed from the bathroom.

But now the avoiding game was over, because we both had to be on our best boyfriend and girlfriend behavior. If it wasn’t for not wanting to spoil Lizzie’s wedding with relationship drama and not wanting to let my mom down, I would’ve just told everyone we split up to save ourselves the trouble. Now that I knew I was planning to leave Pollard Marketing anyway, the threat of being fired had lost its sting.

I still needed to tell Marley about that, and it was a conversation I wasn’t looking forward to.

Dean hooked his arm through mine as we headed in from the parking lot to the big building. It was some sort of fancy hotel, I realized, and we followed signs for the reception dinner to a moodily lit dining room through the lobby. Based on the signs, it was a very fancy restaurant that Jonas Pollard had apparently bought out for our evening. Shocker.

“You doing alright?” Dean asked through the side of his mouth as we headed in. We weren’t exactly early, which meant everybody was already talking and chatting with enthusiasm and hadn’t noticed us enter yet. There were several tables spread around the room with drinks set out, but at the moment, people were just walking around and talking to each other.

“I’m perfect,” I said with a little more venom than I intended.

“Look, Pearl, I really am sorry about–”

“I don’t want your apology, okay? It feels like pity, and the last thing I want is your pity. Let’s just get through this. Can we do that?”

Dean hesitated. “Yeah. Are you alright with the anxiety thing?”

“Don’t play hero. I managed without you before all this and I’ll manage now. Worry about yourself.” Part of me hated how mean I was being to him. I didn’t think I realized how much anger and resentment I felt until I actually spoke to Dean. The last real conversation we’d had was in that fitting room where I felt like I bared my soul for him. Talking to Steph, I had said the things I thought I should say. I didn’t blame him. You can’t force someone to love you. Dean never misled me.