didn’t know it was supposed to rain,” she explained, running her hands down her thighs.
“No problem.”
“Did you see the invitation for Alex and Morgan’s wedding?” she asked. “I mean, it came to our old place, but Morgan said she’d send you another one since we aren’t each other’s plus-ones anymore. Unless…” She bit her bottom lip, and fuck, all I wanted was a cold beer and silence. “Unless you want to still go together.”
I raked my hand through my hair. “I think we both know why that’s not a good idea.”
“It could be a good idea if we tried it, though. I mean, really—how about we give that exes-with-benefits thing a go? I think I’m healed enough from the breakup.” She said it in a playful tone, but I knew she was serious.
“Amanda…you just drunk-dialed me sobbing last weekend.”
“That was the alcohol’s fault. It makes me a mess.” She laughed, but I knew it was a nervous laugh. I felt pretty shitty about the breakup, not because it wasn’t right for us—because it was—but because she was having such a hard time with it all.
We pulled up in front of her apartment building, and I put the truck into park. “Amanda, come on. We’ve talked about this. It’s just not going to work between us. You already know I think you’re a great girl and—”
“Please don’t belittle me with your empty compliments,” she muttered. “It doesn’t make it hurt any less.”
I lowered my head. “If having you work for my dad is making this split too hard, I can look into having him transferred—”
“I can do my job,” she snapped. “I don’t need you questioning if I can handle my work because of my feelings for you. Besides, I was kidding about being exes-with-benefits. Just drop it. I’m sure you’ll be dating soon enough anyway, and it’ll be as though I never existed.”
“I’m not seeing anyone.” If only she knew how wrong she was about her theory. Dating was so far off my radar. I figured if a girl like Amanda couldn’t make me a family man, maybe I wasn’t meant to be one. She was a good person with a kind heart.
There was just some unknown part of me that didn’t see myself falling in love with her and raising her children, and I wasn’t going to be the asshole who strung her along. I was going to be the asshole who broke her heart.
Talk about a lose-lose situation.
“Did you ever love me?” she asked, and fuck did that question suck. She knew the answer. I didn’t know why she was doing this to herself.
I glanced over at her and witnessed her eyes filling with emotion. “I’m sorry, Amanda.”
“Maybe you’re just like your father,” she stated, and those words made my skin crawl. “Maybe you’re just so messed up in the brain that you can’t love another person—or even let them love you.”
My jaw tightened as I tried to shake off what she’d said.
Maybe you’re just like your father.
That was a low blow, and Amanda knew it. The only thing in life I never wanted to be was like my father.
“Good night, Amanda.”
“Really? That’s it? You’re not going to try to argue that?”
Of course I wasn’t. She was setting up a trap I didn’t want to mess with at the moment. She was trying to force some kind of reaction out of me, but I had nothing to give her. I’d keep my irritation to myself, because the truth was, I was nothing like my father. I never allowed my anger to overtake me.
She hopped out of the truck without a word and hurried into the apartment building.
A sigh rolled through me as I turned the radio back to the rock station.
When I pulled up to my family’s property—over one hundred acres of land that had been pretty much unkempt for years—I released a sigh of relief. I could’ve worked on the landscaping, but whenever I offered, Dad made sure to tell me not to touch shit until he was dead and gone. He said once he died, it would all be mine, and I already knew what I wanted to do with it. Mom had dreams way back when about what she wanted the lot to look like. I was going to do my best to make her vision become a reality.
I didn’t believe in angels, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a possibility they were real. If they were, I knew my mother would be an angel,