Falling for You by Caisey Quinn Read Free Book Online Page A

community college was currently subletting the apartment she’d shared with her mom while Brenda Buchanan was in rehab. Fate had been thankful to have the rent covered. Now, she wished she could run back home and hide. But she couldn’t. Trevor or no Trevor, she had a job in New York, one she now needed desperately.
    I have a job. That’s a good thing. I just have nowhere to live.
    That was the primary issue at the moment, one she had no idea how to deal with. Trevor had a place in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. She did not.
    A knock on the door of the bridal suite startled her out of her depressing thoughts. Fate stilled in the midst of zipping her now unnecessary wedding dress into the garment bag.
    She’d sneaked back in late last night, counting her lucky stars that no one had seen her. It looked as if her luck had run out. Her heart picked up the pace like a wild racehorse competing for the Triple Crown.
    “Fate?”
    The voice was soft, heavy with grief, and female.
    Closing her eyes, Fate took several deep breaths. She fisted her shaking hands and walked over to the door. When she opened it, a redhead with red-rimmed eyes stood on the other side.
    “He’s not in here with me, Melissa. He’s all yours. I’m on my way out.”
    Her former best friend’s lower lip trembled. “I-I’m not here for him. I’m here to talk to you. I know you probably don’t care what I have to say, but I thought it might do us both some good to clear the air.” After a deep breath, the other woman added a, “Please,” to her offer.
    Fate frowned, trying to decide if she was strong enough to stomach Melissa’s detailing the events that had led to this nightmarish catastrophe of epic proportions.
    After a few tension-filled seconds, she decided that knowing was better than not knowing despite the fact that it made no difference either way. What was done was done.
    “I saw enough to put the pieces together,” Fate began, opening the door wider. “But if there’s something else you need to say, I won’t stop you.”
    Melissa let out a strangled cry of relief. “I know this doesn’t matter now, but I never wanted to hurt you. I don’t think Trevor did either.” She stepped past Fate into the room and gestured to the bed. “Can we sit?”
    “You can,” Fate said, moving to the side near the vanity table and folding her arms.
    Melissa lowered herself onto the bed and used an already wadded tissue from her hand to dab her eyes. She wasn’t sobbing, but her eyes seemed to be perpetually filled with tears.
    “It started last year—right after Ethan proposed.”
    Fate’s chest constricted. Ethan and Melissa had ended things more than six months ago. So for at least half a year, the past one hundred and eighty days or so, her fiancé and best friend had been sleeping together. It didn’t feel good to know.
    “Okay. Well, thanks for the timeline. Is that all?”
    Melissa shook her head. “I made a mistake. Several actually. The rumors are true. I cheated on Ethan. I had this strange fear that, somehow, once we were married, we’d fall into a mundane routine and I’d suffocate. I just… I wanted one last fling, you know?”
    Fate didn’t know. She had no idea why someone would cheat on a man like Ethan. He was handsome and successful, and he had adored her friend from what she’d seen.
    “You and I are very different people,” was all she could offer.
    “I plan weddings for a living, Fate. And I keep up with some of my clients. Marriage felt terrifying to me. Like a trap, like a place where everything that made me me would be sucked out and I’d just become Ethan’s wife and nothing more. I can’t explain it beyond telling you that I felt like I was losing myself and I went out one night with my friend, Alicia. We were just flirting and being ridiculous—giving guys fake names and numbers and acting impulsively.” She glanced around the room as if looking for an alternate ending to her story, but Fate could