Page 111 of The Hookup
“I didn’t need my family to come here.”
“But I had nothing to do with that. If you want to blame me for anything, blame me for forgetting to tell you. It’s not like I didn’t have another million things to take care of apart from you.”
“I didn’t ask you to look after me.”
Anger hurtled through her like a hurricane. The ungrateful douchebag. “Youdidn’t, but Marie did.”
That startled him. His expression bordered on disbelief. “I wish she’d mind her goddamn business. I don’t need anybody to look after me, and I sure as hell don’t need you.”
“Really?” The audacity, the sheer, unbridled ingratitude of the man. “You could have fooled me.”
But he seemed too caught up in his own troubles to notice her shock.
“Actually, that’s not entirely true. I didn’t only do it because Marie asked me to. I wanted to make sure you were okay. I did it because, despite you being the biggest asshole to me a lot of the time, I thought I caught a glimmer of therealyou, a new you, sometimes.”
“You don’t know the real me,” he replied, looking completely miserable as he sat on the sofa. He leaned forward, holding his head in his hands. She could see that the morning had taken its toll on him. The arguing was only going to make things worse.
“That’s because you can’t share yourself. You won’t open up,” she said, keeping her distance across the room from him, and folding her arms. “You’re a tightly wound up ball of emotions, sometimes, and trying to reach inside you is impossible.”
“If that’s what you think then I don’t know what you’re doing here,” he shot back.
“Because I—” she paused. It wasn’t love. She didn’t know what love was. She really didn’t. Not the type of love that Savannah knew. But she had liked taking care of him. She had liked knowing that he needed her, because nobody had needed her before the way Luke had needed her now. “Because I was trying to be like most normal decent people. I was trying to do the right thing.”
“Why?”
“Why?” Because she was starting to think he might be changing for the better. “Because sometimes youcanbe nice.”
“Nice?” he scoffed.
“I do care about you, even if it’s not the same anymore.”
His eyes flashed dangerously. “What do you mean it’s not the same?”
“You know it’s not,” she replied, and before he could question her, she remembered something she had been meaning to ask him. “Why does Maggie annoy you so much?” She wanted to know why he’d fallen out with his brother, but that could wait. Her need to find out about Maggie was more pressing.
“She just does.”
“And your brother?” She sat down next to him, not close, but with enough space between them that he wouldn’t feel she was intruding. Any conversation about his family seemed to hem him in, and she wanted answers. She’d let it go too long, watching, saying nothing, and yet it was clear to her that the biggest problems he had stemmed from them.
“Don’t ever talk to me about my brother.”
She pressed her lips together. “You hate Maggie because she married your brother?”
He looked at her as if she had stumbled across a secret. “Did Amanda tell you?”
Shehadstumbled across a secret. She remained quiet, letting him think what he wanted, then, when he didn’t let up, “Your sister said she was surprised and pleased to hear that we’d been together for a while.”
He squeezed his eyes shut, as if doing so would block out everything. “I needed someone to go with me.”
She frowned, not understanding. “Go where?”
“To the wedding. I would have hired someone, but you were on the scene, and you seemed different.”
She swallowed, still not understanding where this was going. “Different?” she asked, hoping to coax it out of him.
“With your banking background. I knew you’d make a better impression on my family, in case you were unlucky enough to get into a conversation with them.”
“To make an impression on your family?” she asked, alarm bells going off in her head. She shifted, twisting her body towards him. “Who were you trying to impress, your father?”
