Page 10 of Crashing the Altar
Jett Sullivan shook his head with a rough chuckle. “Where was this fire when it came to fighting to make the girl yours before someone else did?”
“Don’t,” I gritted out, jaw locking. I respected the hell out of my father, but I wouldn’t stand for him poking this particular bruise on my heart.
Crossing both arms over his chest, he granted me no mercy. “Don’t what, son? Don’t tell you that you had all the time in the world to make a move on the girl, yet you wasted it? Don’t tell you that anyone with eyes can see she’s always been in love with you too? Don’t tell you that no one can blame her for getting tired of waiting for you and moving on? Don’t tell you it’s your own damn fault that she did because you decided to sit on your hands your whole life?”
“Enough!” I roared. “I get it, okay?”
“Do you, though?” he challenged.
“Jett, let the boy be,” Mama chimed in, kindly asking my father to stand down.
“He’s not a boy anymore, Daze,” Dad argued. “He’s a grown man who has to face the repercussions of his actions—or the lack of them, in this case.”
“I know.” She stood, crossing the kitchen to lay a comforting hand on my arm. “But he’s suffering enough without you heaping on.”
Dad grunted but didn’t utter another word.
The sound of the front door being opened echoed through the house, and familiar voices floated closer until Aspen and Mac stepped into the room. My sister stopped short when she surveyed the scene laid out before her, which caused her husband to crash into her from behind. Mac let out a low curse as he reached out to keep her from tumbling belly-first to the ground.
Eyes growing glassy, my big sis whispered thickly, “I’m so sorry, Tripp.”
My gaze swept over my family. Every single one of them wore a look of pity aimed in my direction, and a vise tightened around my heart.
Everyone in town knew I’d been hung up on Penny my entire life. Everyone but the woman herself.
She was the only one who mattered, but I’d been too terrified to come clean about how I felt.
And now I never could.
Because she was marrying another man.
Chapter 2
Penny
Tripp’storturedgazewhenhe learned of my engagement would be burned into my memory for all time.
Even though I wore another man’s ring on my finger, I pleaded with him with my eyes in that moment, practically begging for him to tell me not to do it. If he had, I would’ve broken it off in an instant. Heknewthat he was the only man I wanted. I’d told him that.
Yeah, and then pretended like you couldn’t remember anything you said the next morning.
That morning and my outright lie to Tripp had resulted in a cosmic shift. It might have kept our friendship intact and unchanged, but I became determined to rid myself of the ridiculous crush I had on my best friend.
When I went back to college for my senior year that fall, I lost my virginity to the first guy who hit on me at a party my roommate had dragged me to. There had been enough alcohol involved that I could pretend it was Tripp above me, grunting and groaning, whispering dirty words in my ear. But reality came crashing down hard when I woke up the nextmorning sober, realized what I’d done, and spent the next twenty-four hours bawling my eyes out.
After that, there were a few casual hookups with some of the summer seasonal workers on the ranch and a few more during my time obtaining my degree in veterinary medicine—never anyone that called Rust Canyon home. While it always felt good, my heart wasn’t in it, and I never formed an attachment to any man I was with.
They all lacked one thing: they weren’t Tripp.
I wanted to scream my frustration out loud in the room full of people gathered for my birthday, but instead, I plastered on a smile and acted the part of the excited-to-be-newly-engaged woman everyone expected of me.
Engaged. I was getting married.
To Jake. Not Tripp.
Today had gone completely off the rails. I never expected Jake to drop to one knee in the middle of my birthday party, let alone have Tripp walk in thirty minutes later when he’d led me to believe he was working hours away with the rodeo team.
But if I was blindsided, I could only imagine what Tripp was going through. I had planned to tell him about Jake when we talked on the phone later that night, but at that point, he’d only been my boyfriend. So Tripp had come home to surprise me, only to get the shock of a lifetime.
