Free Something Borrowed by Louisa George Page A

cafe. ‘Got to go. I’ll keep in touch. See you—Oh. Oh, great. Charming.’
    ‘What’s wrong?’
    Chloe looked around the café. There was no sign of man nor instrument. ‘He’s gone. Taken the guitar and everything. Gone.’
    She wandered back to their table and her half-filled cup of expensive coffee. There was her screwed-up IOU in a little puddle of coffee spill with scrawly spidery writing on it. Limp and sad-looking, just, she realised, how she imagined she must look. ‘He’s left a note on a napkin: DaydreamBeliever, sorry to disappoint but I didn’t feel any chemistry. You seem nice, but you’re just not my type. Didn’t want you getting your hopes up. Good luck. Carl. ’
    Getting her hopes up? He wished. He’d gone, just like that, when she’d been feeling sorry for him?
    Sad thing was, she found it hard to really care about TheBigCarlhuna’s jilting. She felt precisely… nothing, about him. She supposed that proved to her it wasn’t meant to be.
    She didn’t remember dating being so awkward, or was it that it hadn’t been? She and Jason had hit it off immediately. They’d been in the same group of friends hanging around at school, and it had felt inevitable that they’d get together.
    The rest of her life didn’t feel inevitable at all now. It just felt kind of bare. A whole fresh canvas, Jenna would say.
    Chloe screwed up the note again and threw it into the half-filled cup. Another one bites the dust.
    One thing did niggle her, though; what was it about men that they couldn’t look her in the eye and let her down gently? Why did they all take the coward’s way out and run off before facing her?
    In truth, the only man who’d been honest with her was Vaughn Bloody Brooks, and that had been some showdown, but he’d at least had the decency to turn up.
    And why, in heaven’s name, did every thought keep turning back to him today? All it did was remind her of what she needed to do to save face next week and gave her a bad case of the jitters.
    Chloe sighed and made her way towards the covered market for some serious window shopping—scarves and jewellery this time, not men. At least there was a chance she might find something she actually fancied here.
    Ah well, she didn’t have to worry about her blue-rinsed nether regions anymore.
    Back to the drawing board.

JENNA
    T hree years ago …

    S ender : [email protected]

    N ick ,
    Thanks for your card and emails. Obviously you heard about Ollie and thanks for your thoughts and the flowers at the funeral.
    It was sad. So very sad. One minute he was there being my husband, planning a life—a good life, Nick, with a baby on the way and a wife who adores him. Sorry, adored him—that seems such a final way of saying things. And a big contract on the horizon that meant we could finally plan our first proper home. The next minute, he was gone. Run over by a lawyer who was texting while driving and who’s trying to wheedle her way out of prison.
    I don’t think she’s ever been married, and she doesn’t have any kids, and I don’t think she has any idea what I’m going through; otherwise, she wouldn’t make us relive it over and over by refusing to take responsibility.
    So, I’m sorry I haven’t written in a while and that I couldn’t see you when you came back to visit your mum. I’ve been lost in a black hole. I mean, totally lost, Nick, and I don’t know how to pull myself out. I have this beautiful baby girl who has his eyes, and every time I look at her, I see him, and it hurts so badly all over again. She’s adorable, I can see that, but I only do what I have to do to get through this and to keep her safe.
    I’m scared to love her. I’m scared to go through all that again, Nick. What if I lose her, too? I could because now I know that there is no safety net out there. Ollie’s accident was just one of those random things that happens. Something that you see every week in the papers, and you gloss on over because it’s