Even if what Tucker did wasn’t something that broke my heart, since I barely knew him, they didn’t know that. I was well aware that none of them, or their opinions should ever matter to me. In a perfect world, in a perfect head, maybe they wouldn’t. There was a part of me who was still that wounded girl, tied to a chair, while people laughed about how my body looked prepubescent even though I was in college. Damn it. I shouldn’t have been thinking about them again. I swiped angrily at the tear that escaped, along with the memory. If only the memory was as easily wiped away.

“Mina,” my name was a whispered plea, but one that I ignored as I kept moving toward the hotel where I’d been staying without saying a word to him. “Please, don’t cry. I’m sorry. I want to explain. I need to… I don’t know… How do I make it better?”

I stopped dead in my tracks then, which meant that Tucker got two steps ahead of me before he realized and turned around. “This,” I pointed to my face, “is NOT about you. Not everything is about you. Now, are you here to tell me when and where to sign whatever is necessary to annul our marriage?”

“Of course not,” he insisted.

“Then we have nothing to discuss.”

“Mina, I don’t want an annulment.”

“I didn’t want you to break your promise and make me look like a laughingstock in the news either, but hey we don’t always get what we want in life.”

“I said I was sorry.”

“Sorry doesn’t fix things!” The words were yelled at him, and angrily so. Then I reached out and grabbed the cell phone he had cradled in his hand and I threw the thing. I walked over to where it landed, pieces of the glass scattered around the ground thanks to the force. Then I looked at the phone and spoke, “I’m sorry.”

I glanced back at a shocked Tucker. “Well, what do you know? Saying ‘I’m sorry,’ didn’t fix your phone. It’s not going to fix what you did to me either.” I glanced around and noticed that a woman parked in the car beside us was filming with her cell phone and I flipped her off, then turned in a huff and started walking away as Tucker stopped to pick up the bulk of his shattered phone.

Instead of saying anything else to me when he caught up again, Tucker just walked alongside me until I got to the cheap, no-name motel where I’d been staying. He stood there, shocked for a moment as I climbed the outdoor steps to the second level. I would most likely have to find somewhere else to stay, because there was no telling who was witnessing this, or where their cameras were pointed. Instead, I quickly unlocked my door and entered.