Page 89 of Single Girl in the City
She’d expected him to hurt her—which he had. She’d been waiting for the blow—which he’d so graciously given her. And he hated himself for it.
“What did she really do that was so bad to let her walk away?” Josh asked. He wasn’t poking or trying to get a reaction from Owen, he was genuinely interested in Owen’s answer. But he didn’t have one.
“I don’t know.” Then Owen asked, “And how the hell did you know who she was?”
“Abilene is a pretty distinctive name. I remembered it from when I was going through Dad’s case.”
“Did you tell Mom?”
Josh shook his head. “She must have figured it out the same way.” Josh paused. “Is it so bad that she came here to check in on you and when she saw you were drowning—”
“Something we should have taken more seriously,” Clay added. “She did what none of us found the time to do—help you.”
“She had ulterior motives,” Owen said.
“You mean her good, sweet intentions?” Clay asked. “You waited on her doorstep to ask her to stay with you. You even brought her flowers hoping to persuade her to say yes. You stacked the deck in your favor to get the best possible outcome. How is that any different?”
“It’s different,” he said, and even he didn’t believe it.
“You asked her to stay, then pulled a Kyle?” Rhett said loud enough for the entire bar to hear, then burst out laughing. “You are so screwed.”
“How is this anything like what Kyle did?” Owen wanted to know. He loved his late brother, but he and Kyle couldn’t be more opposite. Where Owen always put his loved ones first, Kyle had had a way of putting himself first.
“Rhett’s right,” Gage said. “You tell some chick you love her, ask her to commit to you, then she drops a bomb that complicates things and you say, ‘See ya.’ That’s a move straight from Kyle’s handbook. So the only question is: are you going to let her walk away and lose her forever or are you going to go after her?”
“Darcy’s intentions were pure, Abi’s weren’t.” Even as he said it, he heard just how lame his excuse sounded.
“She hurt your man-feelings, is that it?” Rhett asked.
“He does have an ego the size of Texas,” Gage chimed in.
“Isn’t that where Abi’s from? Texas?” Rhett laughed it up. “You managed to find your perfect Southern girl and you chased her off.”
“What do you mean,chased her off?”
Gage was as stupid as they came because he leaned forward, resting his elbows on the tabletop, bringing his face within smack-down reach. “Well, she was looking at you like she’d swim through lava for you, and you pretty much told her to take her sweet intentions and fuck off.”
“She lied.”
“I didn’t tell you that those pants make your butt look big. Is that a lie?” Rhett asked.
Clay, who’d been silently watching the events unfold, spoke, “For the first time since Elena, you had a shot at something good and you’d rather piss it away than admit that maybe you’re scared.”
“No wonder you chased off the only good woman you’ve had in years,” Josh said, and Owen felt his chest tighten.
He leaned back and rubbed his hand over the pain, trying to ease the raw ache that had been gnawing at him. It didn’t help. Nothing he seemed to do helped. It just got worse, deeper, hollower.
He hadn’t chased off Abi. What he’d done had been worse. After knowing her past and all the people who’d let her go, he’d stood by and watched her walk away—all by herself.
Rhett stared at him with so much sadness. “Do you know how many people would kill to have a person care so much that they’d put their life on hold to check in with someone from their past?” Owen didn’t know what to say. “I’d kill for a woman like that.”
The table went still, and Owen felt the weight of the situation. Felt his brother’s pain and shared in his loss.
“My life didn’t work out that way but yours could. All you have to do is take the first step,” Rhett added.
“How do I get past knowing that it started on a lie?” Last time someone hid a lie, it broke his damn heart.
“Are you even listening to yourself?” Gage asked. “My bet is that you’re using this as an excuse to push her away because you’re scared of getting hurt again. She’s not Elena.”
