shut your mouth before you say something else you’re going to regret later.”
“I won’t regret shit, except maybe that I set myself up for this to start with. Thanks for your lack of denial, by the way. Tells me all I need to know.”
“God! You’re being so unreasonable. I realize you’ve been burned and all, but don’t project that onto me. I won’t tolerate that.”
He was quiet for a long time, too long. “There’s a lot I won’t tolerate, Macy. I have a line. Once it’s crossed, that’s it. Secrets, sneaking around, other motherfuckers sniffing around while you pretend like it’s no big deal. Been there. These are major fuckin’ issues for me. You should know that.”
Macy scoffed, trying to hold on to anger that was fast morphing into heartbreak. “Poor you. Get over it. I don’t think I’d be too out of line in suggesting that you’re just looking for some reason to believe the line has been crossed when it hasn’t. I haven’t done anything. I’ve explained to you that I don’t lay my drama out for everyone to see. You want everything up front, and that’s a major friggin’ issue for me.”
“You brought your drama to the fucking table back there. You had your drama written all over your face. What am I supposed to think?”
“Fine, Seth. The friend I was talking to is Jared Stanton. You saw him at the bar on Valentine’s night. I’ve known him for as long as I can remember. We dated from the time I was fourteen years old until I had my accident. After that, he knocked up some other girl, got married, had twins, got divorced. I give his daughters horse riding lessons because he works a lot, and he knows I’m damn good at it. And yes, he wants me back. I saw him at my parents’ house last weekend. He wanted me to come to a roping today. I agreed to go for old time’s sake, but I blew him off to see you. And he’s pissed, and he said some really shitty things just now. End of story. Satisfied?”
“All this has been going on since you’ve been seeing me?”
“Yes.”
“Fuck.”
And that was that. He completely shut down. Maybe she deserved it; maybe—no, definitely, she supposed, considering his reaction—she should’ve been up front with him about it all. She really hadn’t considered it that big a deal. Because it wasn’t one, at least in her mind.
Then again, she’d never been the one left behind before. She’d always been the one who did the leaving.
Jesus. Who’d have thought being the type of person who liked to keep your mouth shut instead of flapping a hundred miles a minute would blow up so spectacularly in your face? Wasn’t it usually the other way around?
“Look, I’m sorry,” she said, hating the pleading undertone in her voice. “None of this is as bad as it sounds. I’ve been telling him and telling him I’m not getting back together with him. He knows about you. It’s not like I’m keeping us a secret.”
“Just keeping him a secret from me.” He braked so hard in the parking lot of their hotel that if she hadn’t been wearing her seat belt, she might’ve been thrown into the dashboard.
“For good reason, apparently!” she snapped, unbuckling and flinging the belt off. Once she’d gotten out of the car, she noticed he made no move to do the same. He didn’t even kill the engine. Holding on to the door, she leaned in to look at him, her pulse in her ears. “Are you leaving?”
His face was in shadow, but given the ice in his voice, that was probably a good thing. “Shut the door.”
Oh God, there had to be something she could say to make this better. Some magic phrase that would let him know he had no reason to be jealous or threatened. None whatsoever. But if this was his reaction whenever she received the least amount of attention from the opposite sex, did she really want any part of it?
If this was how he wanted it, then this was how it was going to be. She slammed the door and didn’t wait around to watch him leave.
Which he did.
Oh, hell no.
Thank God they’d each taken a key card. She let herself into the room and gave her purse a fling in the darkness, hearing the contents scatter wherever it landed. The first thing to draw her gaze as she flipped on the light was his