Page 80 of A Cowboy's Bride
Aiden froze. His stomach fell all the way down to his toes. He had not seen that one coming. “Really.”
She took a deep breath then nodded firmly.
“Then I’ll get out of your way. I’ll do it right now.” Seconds later, the door slammed shut behind him as fury whipped through his veins.
He veered away from where the partiers were gathered by the fire pit and stomped his way back to the main house. The snow along the western path was tracked up and dirty with mud from the gravel drive. A perfect match to his suddenly foul mood.
This was not what he’d been hoping for at all. But damn if he was going to make the woman put up with his sorry ass when?—
He was only feet away from the porch when something smacked into the back of his head, knocking him forward and covering him with a fine dusting of ice and cold.
He twisted on the spot, cursing whoever had the gall to hit him with a freaking snowball right now. Then he spotted Petra bearing down on him like a freight train.
19
What. The.Hell?
When Aiden abruptly left the room, Petra had stared after him for ten seconds before giving chase.
If nothing else she needed to knock some sense into that fat head of his. The snowball was what came naturally.
“Where are you going? We were in the middle of a conversation,” she barked, her fingers tingling from the cold and wet.
“But you don’t want to spend your time with me,” he snapped back, “I’m getting out of your hair so you don’t have to.”
Her confusion deepened. “What are you talking about?”
“You just told me you don’t want to be engaged anymore.”
“What?” She hadn’t said that. Had she? She thought back… “You’re going to need to help me out here, because we seem to be in two different conversations.”
His eyes flashed with anger. “Maybe it’s a good thing your parents showed up unannounced. It’s clarified a lot. Number one, you didn’t want to tell them that we were engaged. You were horrified when Chance mentioned it. Once we were alone, you clearly said that you wanted to stop. That you didn’t want to be with me anymore.”
He’d lost his mind. Petra wrapped her arms around herself to try to keep out the cold, shaking her head in denial. “That’s not what I said. Or if that’s what I said, that’s not what I meant.”
“Extremely unhelpful,” Aiden snapped. He stomped in a circle for seconds before tipping his head toward the house. “Get inside. We can have this argument in front of the fire so you don’t freeze to death.”
They kicked off their shoes in silence, shuffling forward until they stood in front of the woodburning stove. As far apart from each other as they could be while still being enveloped by heat.
She took a deep breath then lifted her gaze to his. “I wasn’t embarrassed to have my parents hear Chance call you my fiancé. What I’m embarrassed about is that for days I’ve felt how wrong it is, this thing we’re doing.”
Aiden closed his eyes, frustration washing over his face. “This conversation isn’t getting any better.”
There was no way to do this without full-on embarrassing herself. So be it. “Fine, I’ll stop trying to say this in a way that gives you an out. When we first talked about fooling around, we said that if either of us wanted to stop, we were adults. We would just say we wanted to stop being friends with benefits.”
He looked at her for a long moment. “And that’s what you want?” Aiden asked quietly.
“I want to stop the fake part. I want to stop thepretending.” She closed her eyes, because looking at him while she blurted out everything was impossible. “We got shoved into this relationship through no decision of our own, but Aiden, I would’ve picked you. If we’d had the time to do things normally, we would’ve started dating.”
When she opened her eyes he was staring at her, jaw dropped, speechless.
She hurried forward, because if she didn’t say it now, she might lose her courage. “Part of what’s had me confused is that ithasbeen fast. As if part of my brain has been making the same comments that Mom and Dad did about what happened with Curtis, but the comparison felt off kilter.” She took a deep breath and stepped toward him. She caught his cold hands in hers, holding them tightly. “Every time I looked at the calendar it seemed as if it was far too short of a time to care about you as much as I do. It should feel scary, like a reminder of Curtis and what went wrong, but it never did. When I think back to what I had with Curtis, and what I have with you—there is no comparison. You and I have grown so close, so fast, because we’ve been open and honest and ourselves—at least in private.”
Aiden’s mouth hung open. “You’re not trying to break up with me?”
“Of course not. I’m trying to tell you what I don’t like is thepretending.” She sucked in all of her bravery and finished her confession. “Because I haven’t been pretending. I care about you, Aiden. I like being with you. I like the things you do and who you are. I think we’re good together.”
The corner of his lips twitched. Then he tugged her toward him and wrapped his arms around her.
