Page 96 of Wild and Wrangled

“Ah,” Wes said like he understood. “I see. Wanna talk about it?”

I let out a long sigh and nodded. “I don’t know. Things were going well—I thought we were going to make it this time. But then today, I got this bomb dropped on me, and I’m not handling it well.”

“What kind of bomb?” Wes asked.

“A big, destructive, and out-of-the-blue bomb that is making me wonder if everything was too good to be true.”

“Does he have a family in Connecticut or Australia or something?” Wes asked.

I shook my head. “Nothing like that.”

“But it’s gotta be pretty bad for you to be second-guessing, right? From what I’ve heard, things seem to be going pretty well.”

“What have you heard?” I asked, raising my eyebrows.

Wes shrugged. “Ada says you’re happy. Riley wouldn’t shut up about him when she slept over a few weeks ago. I don’t know—it makes sense to me that you guys found your way back to each other. I always envied you guys’ friendship in high school and then you started kissing and shit, and I thought you’d be together forever.”

“Wes, you had more friends than anyone I knew.”

“But I didn’t really have a best friend like you and Dusty or Teddy and Emmy or Brooks and Gus. I wanted that. I alwaysthought you guys were lucky to have it. And now I do have a best friend, and I know I was right to want it.”

My heart softened for him. Wes loved Ada so loudly and so much.

“Well,” I said, “it’s not really going well anymore. I found out this morning that he bought the house I’m living in like five years ago, and he didn’t tell me.”

Wes blinked slowly. “And this is a bad thing because?”

“Because he lied about it. Because that means it’s not really mine, and I truly still don’t have anything of my own, and the house that was supposed to be my fresh start actually came with its own baggage.”

“Okay…” Wes replied slowly. “But you’re renting it anyway, so it wouldn’t have been yours either way, right?”

I worried my bottom lip. “That’s not the point. The point is that he let me believe that Anne owned it this whole time even though he did. Plus, he knew how much I loved the house, so I don’t like that he bought it with me in mind.”

“Do you know he did?”

“He said that wasn’t the only reason but that it was one of them. He said he didn’t move in because he didn’t want to live there without me.”

Wes nodded again, and it looked like he was fighting a smile. “So you’re mad because your high school slash current boyfriend bought you a house and let you live in it when you needed a place to go?”

“That’s a major oversimplification, Weston,” I asserted.

“Sometimes these thingsaresimple, Cam.” He shrugged. “Obviously, I don’t have the whole story from either of you, but, I don’t know, this feels like a hiccup, not a relationship altering or ending situation.

“Should he have told you about the house? Definitely. I think it would’ve been better for him to be up front when he agreed to let you rent it. But if he did tell you, would you have moved in?” I didn’t know the answer to that—probably not. I was so afraid of getting close to him then. Wes must’ve seen the look on my face because he kept talking.

“I get wanting to have something to call your own—I really do, Cam. And I know there’s a lot of other stuff wrapped up in that feeling—especially after what you went through. But I’ve also been the person who’s just trying to show the scared and fiercely independent woman how much he loves her. And sometimes”—he smiled—“it doesn’t go according to plan and you end up scaring her instead of winning her over.”

“I’m not scared,” I said. “I’m mad.”

“So you can tell me with one hundred percent certainty that the combination of Dusty buying that house because of you, then spending more time with him again, and the potential of a future where you’re together and happy doesn’t scare you even a little bit? It just makes you mad?”

“You’re taking a lot of liberties with this little advice column you’ve got going on, Wes,” I said with an eye roll.

“Cam.” His face was thoughtful, his voice earnest. “I love you. You’re like another sister to me. When everything happened on your wedding day, I was sad for you, but I also kind of felt…relieved. Like I didn’t have to pretend that I was okay with you settling for less than you deserved anymore.” I swallowed hard. “But the thought of you and Dusty finally finding your way back to each other after all this time and letting this get in the way of that breaks my heart intwo.

“I think you need to talk to Dusty about the house thing—tell him that secrets like that won’t fly in the future. Talk about what it means for your relationship right now and in the future, but I don’t think you need to use this as an excuse to leave him first.”

My head snapped toward him. “What did you say?”

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