“Did I stutter? Where the fuck were you?” So maybe I wasn’t keeping calm the way I’d planned, but this was the best I could do.
Her eyes widened. “What’s with the attitude, Chewy?”
“Why are you avoiding the motherfucking question? Where. The fuck. Were. You?”
The hurt on her face was impossible to miss. My gaze locked with her pretty green eyes, and I didn’t miss the bit of puffiness beneath them. But I already knew she’d been crying, didn’t I?
Because she’d been cozied up to her ex-boyfriend, crying in a coffee shop twenty minutes ago.
“I don’t know what’s going on with you, but I’m not going to be spoken to like that.” She turned on her heels and stormed in the opposite direction.
“Yeah, you don’t like answering questions that don’t suit you, do you?” I shouted at her.
She whipped around. “I don’t like answering questions when someone is demanding I tell them where I was. You’re not my boss, Finn. I don’t work for you.”
“I’m more than aware I’m not your boss. I’m just your best friend, right? And your fuckboy? But nothing more.”
Her shoulders sagged, and a tear streaked down her cheek. “You’re much more than that, and you know it.”
I stepped toward her, softening my tone. “Tell me where you were.”
“You’re making this a bigger deal than it is.” She used the back of her hand to swipe at the falling tears. “I met Carl at Cup of Cove. We just had some last-minute work things to talk about. For his office design.”
She couldn’t look at me, so I knew she was lying.
“So why keep that a secret? Why keep the fact that he stopped by the other day a secret? Since when do you lie to me, Reese?”
Her mouth fell open, and she shook her head. “It’s not what you think, Finn. You’ve got to trust me.”
“Like you trust me? Hell, you don’t believe that I’m all in. That I can be faithful to you. You won’t even discuss the idea of it until I come back. Yet, you want me to trust you?”
“It’s not that I don’t trust you.” She moved toward me, reaching for my hand and pressing my palm to her cheek. “I don’t want to make you promise something that you can’t deliver. I want you to be happy because I love you.”
“I don’t know about that, Miney. I think you’re the one who isn’t sure about this. You’ve got someone lined up, waiting for me to leave town, don’t you? You’re already packed and ready to go. You’ve got one foot out the door, and I haven’t even left town. I’m guessing you can’t wait for me to leave so you can jump back into the sack with that piece of shit.”
She dropped my hand and stepped back, tears streaming down her face. “If you think that, then you don’t know me at all.”
“Maybe I don’t.”
“Wow. Maybe this is just your way of getting out of this before you leave, huh? You can head to Tokyo guilt-free and fuck whoever you want.”
“Sure. It’s what you thought I’d do anyway, right? Just living up to your expectations.”
She placed her hand on her heart, and a sob escaped her lips. I wanted to rush her and wrap my arms around her, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. She didn’t want me, and that hurt like hell.
“I’m going to head to the rental house early. I think we could both use some space right now.”
“You sure you aren’t going to Carl’s? You may as well just tell me now. It’s a small town, remember? Word travels. I’ll hear about it.”
She let out a long breath. “Have a safe trip, Chewy. Whether you believe it or not, I love you.”
She turned around and made her way into the house. I walked out to the truck and climbed back in. I threw it in reverse and sped down the driveway. I needed to get out of here.
Couldn’t believe this shit was happening.
This was fucking Reese.
I knew her better than I knew myself.
And she’d fucking ripped my heart from my chest.
I made my way to Reynolds’, and Lila told me Hugh was down in his office.
“Hey,” I said, closing the door before dropping into the chair across from his desk.
“What happened? You look like shit.”
I spent the next thirty minutes filling him in on all of it. Reese being with Carl. Her not wanting to tell me what was going on. The horrible things I’d said to her. And the things she’d said back.
He sat back in his chair, not saying a word. He just listened.
“You want my opinion, or do you want me to just take your side?” he finally said, intertwining his fingers as he leaned forward on his desk.
“Both.”
“Well, I’ll always have your back, you know that. But this is not some woman that you don’t know, brother. This is Reese. You’ve been best friends since fucking birth. She wouldn’t lie to you if she were sleeping with Carl. It’s not who she is. You know that. I don’t believe there’s anything going on there, and I think you overreacted.”
“So why not tell me that she met with him? Why lie about it?”
He blew out a breath and shrugged. “She didn’t lie. She just didn’t offer it up. There could be a lot of reasons why, but none of those are because she’s playing you. That girl is madly in love with you. If she wanted to get back together with Carl, she’d never have crossed the line with you. I don’t think she knew it at the time, but I’m guessing something inside her knew it. Just like something inside you knew it was right.”
“Yet she doesn’t think I’m capable of having a relationship with her. She insists that I’ll go away, and she won’t even stay at the house because she has so little faith in me.”
“Is that really what you think, Finny?”
I scrubbed a hand down my face. “I don’t know what I fucking think. I’m going out of my mind over this girl. I can’t think straight.”
He chuckled this annoying, cocky sound, and I wanted to dive over the desk and tackle him. He saw the look on my face and held up a hand. “There you go again, overreacting. I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing because you’ve got it bad. I know it. You know it. But she doesn’t know it yet, brother. And it’s fair of her to be cautious.”
“What? I thought you were on my side.”
“I am. Always. But, Finn, come on, man. You’ve never had a relationship that lasted longer than a few drinks and a fun weekend. She’s scared to death. You’re a fucking movie star. You’ve always had women chasing after you. She lives here. She wants the fairy tale, brother. The picket fence and the kids and the whole nine yards. Of course, she’s fucking nervous. I can’t really blame her. She isn’t saying that she’s going to date anyone or run back to her ex. What did she actually say? Be honest. What did she ask you to do?”
I leaned back in my chair and thought it over. “She didn’t want us to make any decisions before I left about—us. She told me to go to Tokyo and have the time of my life, and if I missed her the way she would miss me, she’d move back into the house when I got home next month. She said she didn’t want me to go there feeling pressure with her living at my house, and that if I came back and didn’t feel the same way, we’d go back to being best friends, or some shit like that.”
“You dumb fucker.” He threw his hands in the air. “She’s worried about you. She doesn’t want you to feel trapped. But that sure as shit doesn’t mean she doesn’t want you to come back and want the same things she wants. That’s why she said she’d move back in with you if you still felt the same.”
“Of course, I’ll feel the same. She’s driving me fucking crazy. She’s all I think about.”
“She doesn’t want to hear it, Finn. She wants you to show her. Go to Tokyo. Find a way to show her that you miss her every fucking day. Show her, for fuck’s sake. It’s not a lot to ask. She’s giving you a pass to figure it out. She already knows what she wants. She wants to make sure that you want the same fucking thing. Because she loves you enough to let you go if you don’t.”
“Goddamn it. Should I go to the rental house and bring her home with me? Try to talk to her?”
He laughed so loud that it bellowed around the small office. “I think you’ve gone caveman one too many times already. Demanding her to come home with you right now will not go over well.”