One Last Shot (Pub Fiction #3) Read Online Free Page A

relationship.
    I’d expected to see Matt and Ryker when I opened the door; they were picking Kat and me up for our Valentine’s double date. Instead I saw Seth, one of Kat’s ex-boyfriends. Seth, who was enraged, who literally had lost his mind like some crazed ’roid-rager-turned-Hulk man. Barely allowing me to open the door before he came barreling through, Seth knocked me down in order to get at Kat. Thank goodness I managed to reach my cell to call Matt, and that he and Ryker showed up as quickly as they did, along with campus security and the police.
    The trauma of that night jolted me back to reality, slapping me in the face for forgetting, for being so bold as to think it was safe to love again. Never love. Never get left behind. Even though the boys put a stop to Seth’s attack on Kat right away, it was all so sudden and violent that the what if’s of that night still run through my head. What if something had happened to Matt?
    I’d been forgetting my mantra: Never love and never get left behind. I’d broken the vow I’d made to my fourteen-year-old self. Realizing that I was falling in love—no, loved Matt—I could no longer allow myself that luxury; it was time to end things. And I needed to leave him before he could leave me. I’d been left behind before .
    Witnessing the violence with Seth had a profound effect on the way I saw what I’d been allowing to happen. I’d felt different after the Seth incident compared to the way I did after Kat and I had escaped the fire that burned down our university dorm earlier that year. With the fire, I felt as if I was in control, I was confident that I could lead us to safety, and I did. With the Seth incident, I was more like I’d been blindsided, like nothing was in my control. It made me realize I’d been allowing myself to let my bridge down where Matt was concerned, and it needed to stop. Playing the night over and over, I realized that Seth could have done real damage to the people I loved most in my world, and I had no real control or power over stopping the possibility of hurt from coming again.
    So, I started to pull back into my protective shell. I began distancing myself from everyone I cared about. Cancelling plans and ignoring phone calls on top of avoiding most social interactions. And when I did see Matt, I’d start stupid fights with him. I turned into Robobitch, hurting the people I loved the most without feeling much of anything.
    Self-preservation at its finest, folks.
    Basically, I freaked the fuck out. Being with Matt, I was allowing myself to feel and think things I couldn’t allow myself to want. Never one to have hopes and dreams of happily ever after and other girly stuff, I would catch myself thinking of Matt as my husband one day, and how many kids we might have in the future. But then my reality would come crashing down because I knew there was no way I could have him like that. No way could I stomach the idea of building connections where there was a chance I could be left behind again, or where I could leave someone else hurting in my wake like my parents had left me. I was mad at myself, mad at Matt. I had rules. Rules, I was happily obliging, too, until him . I needed to get away from him before I did something stupid.
    In the end, he made me love him and I’d made me run.
    Luckily for me, I was offered a perfectly-timed job that I had applied for in secret; a contract at the Ministry of Education working on a small team to create and write the new Ontario Curriculum Guide for Inquiry-Based Learning. The job required me to move to Ottawa, Canada’s capital, which was a bit more than five hours away; it was like the stars had aligned telling me this decision was the right one. It was the perfect excuse to bolt without admitting that was exactly what I was doing.
    After many tears and bottles of wine, Kat gave me her support. And that August I moved. I had to make her promise not to give Matt my address or new cell number no