I hated my body for reacting to him how it was. I hated him for being responsible for it.
“Sorry if I have a hard time buying that. I’m not exactly in a giving-the-benefit-of-the-doubt type of mood.” Right then, the sun caught my wedding ring and blinded me. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but it seemed pretty damn symbolic of something given my present situation.
“You have every right to hate me—”
“Damn right I do,” I snapped, twisting the ring around so the diamond couldn’t catch the light anymore.
“I had no right to do what I did. Any of it,” he added, sounding ashamed for the first time.
“Why, Matt? Why did you do it?” I tipped my head back so I could make out his outline. “Why did you really do it?” I needed to know. I needed to know if he’d done it because he’d been trying to help me, or if it was because he couldn’t help himself.
“I already told you why.”
“Yeah, and now I’m asking you to cut the shit and give me the real reason.”
He was quiet for so long, I almost thought he was going to tell me. “I don’t see how me answering that will help either of us right now.”
My heart stopped. I swore it stopped. What did he mean by that? What I hoped he did? Or something else?
When I realized what I was hoping for, guilt washed over me so fast and heavy I felt like I was drowning in it. Jacob. He was the one I’d been in a relationship with for years. He was the one I’d said yes to marrying. He was the one whose name was on the marriage certificate we’d filed at the courthouse. He was the one who loved me and wanted me to be his wife.
I couldn’t fight off the voice chiming in my head that kept asking me why he was gone and Matt was here if that was the truth.
My breath came out all at once, like I’d been holding it forever. “Where’s Jacob?”
He was quiet. His silence told me everything I needed to know. And nothing I wanted to acknowledge.
“Matt?” Finally, I made eye contact with him.
He was looking at me like he’d been expecting the question. “I don’t know.”
A breath seeped past my lips. Matt had been covering for Jacob for their whole lives, as quick to protect his brother as he was me. His experience had made him a proficient liar, but I knew that. I knew he was lying. Or withholding the truth.
What I didn’t know was how bad that truth he was keeping from me was.
“Where is he?”
“I—”
“Yes, you do. You know where he is.” My gaze dropped, unable to hold his stare any longer. “Or who he’s with.”
My voice had been so quiet, I didn’t think he’d heard me. As silent as those words had been, I wished I could take them back. I wished I could swallow them back down into the dark hole they’d crawled from, because thinking it was one thing, but acknowledging it made it real.
Matt crouched behind me, keeping a careful distance when I tensed at his proximity to me. “If he’s with anyone else when he’s got you waiting for him, he’s a goddamned idiot.” He was trying to ease the tension, trying to sway my mood.
“You’ve been calling him a goddamned Idiot since you were kids.” A sad smile formed when I accepted why Jacob hadn’t shown up for his wedding day.
“Cora . . .” Matt’s hand lowered over my back, his familiar warmth seeping into my skin. But something else was spreading inside, winding deeper. It was new, a remnant of what had resulted from our union last night.
I should have flinched away or slapped him or, hell, done a lot more, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. My life had just taken a direct flight to messed up, but for this one stolen moment, I was just going to pretend everything was fine. I was going to pretend that Matt had every right to touch me and I had every right to want him to touch me. Once this moment was done, I’d return to reality, but for right now . . . fuck off, reality.
“Last night, when you told me . . .” My throat felt like it was closing in on itself, so I had to swallow. “When you said you . . .”
I couldn’t get it out. For some reason, I couldn’t say those three words he’d uttered to me before, during, and after, each time, every time. Instead of torturing myself trying to get them out, I lifted my eyes to his. His eyes. Matt’s eyes. God, what had I been thinking? They were so different from Jacob’s. The emotions that tortured his were so different from the ones that toyed with Jacob’s.
“Did you mean it?”
His jaw ground, but he didn’t look away. He didn’t blink. His eyes stayed on mine. As he was opening his mouth, something chimed between us. Call it divine intervention . . . in the form of a phone call.
“Shit. Sorry.” Matt blew out a breath and shook his head like he was trying to shake himself out of a spell. When he pulled out his phone and glanced at the screen, his expression went dark.
“Who is it?” I asked, but I already knew.
Matt lifted the screen so I could see. I was right.
“What are you going to tell him?” That whimsical moment was gone, reality pouring over me.
“What do you want me to tell him?” He hit the silence on his ringer, waiting for me to answer. “What happened last night . . . if you don’t want anyone to know, I swear I won’t tell a soul. I’ll take it to the grave. Just tell me what you want.” His voice got tighter with each word as he searched my face for any hint of what to do next.
“Are you saying you’d be okay with lying to your own brother about the two of us sleeping together?” I scooted away from him, trying to ignore Jacob’s second call coming in.
“I’m saying I’d be okay with anything if it’s what you wanted.”
When I wanted to cry from his words, I forced my eyes to narrow and my body to continue scooting away. “I want you to leave me alone. You had your chance to explain. You gave me your side of the story. Now leave me alone.” I shoved to my feet, adjusting the sheet so it was still covering me. “I don’t want you, Matt. I never have.”
His face remained unaffected, but his eyes gave him away. The look in them made me feel like I was being ripped apart from the inside out. I was breaking him, one word at a time, and I hated myself more for what I was doing to Matt now than for how I’d betrayed Jacob last night.
“I want Jacob.”
In the end, they say it’s the lies we tell that define us more than the truths we admit. I already knew that. The lie I’d been telling for years had been defining me for just as long.
I loved Jacob. Not Matt.
That was the only version of myself I knew.
Just when a guy thought he might finally have a shot at the girl, she looked him point-blank in the eyes and told him she never had and never would want him. She wanted his brother. The same guy who was too busy getting a piece of ass to show up for his own damn wedding day.