Page 65 of The Nice Guy
“I’m not the one with a fiancé, Brynlee.”
“Last I checked, neither am I.”
How long is she going to play this? “There is obviously somethin’ unresolved between the two of you. I feel it, and if I feel it, you have to feel it, too. And so does he because everyone but you seem to have accepted that you’re marryin’ him.”
“What are you talking about? Whatever you’re feeling isn’t because there’s anything between Kevin and me. There’s nothing between us.”
Frustration washes over me, and I need to take a few deep breaths to calm down. If she would just deal with Kevin, maybe, just maybe, we could move on. Figure out what it is we’re doing,but until she admits she’s supposed to be walking down that aisle in February to marry a man who isn’t me, we can’t do anything. “There’s somethin’ there.”
“No, there isn’t!” she cries.
“You’re goin’ to marry him.”
“Stop saying that. I’m not marrying him.”
The internet and her friends say otherwise. And I hate being lied to. “Brynlee—”
“I don’t love him. I never did.”
And if that doesn’t just kick me in the nuts. “You were goin’ to marry a man you didn’t love. Yeah, that sounds like the Brynlee I thought I knew.”
“Rhett, why are you doing this?”
“I think you were right when you said we shouldn’t be together tonight. I’m goin’ to go home.”
She runs in front of me and pushes the door shut, leaning against it with her body while still clutching her robe at the neck. “I don’t understand what I did. Please, just tell me what I did to make you so angry. You’re pushing me away, and I want to know why. I need you to explain because I don’t know what I did, Rhett.”
The tears filling her eyes soften me a little bit. “Brynlee—”
“You haven’t touched me today. You lied about working last night, and I think it was to avoid seeing me. And I’m pretty sure that if we had sex in the shower like we were about to that it would be nothing more than that. Just sex. I’m obviously the bad guy, but I don’t know what I did. Was taking me to see your family a step too far for us?”
I sigh and lean a hand on the door beside her head. “Maybe it was.”
Liar. It was, but not because of the reason she thinks.
“If that’s the case, we can step back. It doesn’t have to be—”
“It’s not that. I just… I don’t know.”
“Please, just… tell me what I did so I can fix it.”
“You want to be with Kevin.”
“No,” she says, shaking her head. “No, I don’t. I don’t want to be with him. I left him. I don’t even think about him.”
I know it’s a lie. A woman doesn’t just stop thinking about the man she’s marrying. “You’re marryin’ him, Brynlee.”
“Why do you keep saying that?”
“Because he proposed, and you said yes.”
“And you were head over heels for Honor. Neither means anything to either of us right now. We both have past relationships, but I don’t know why I’m being punished for mine.”
Sighing again, I move and lean against the doorway into the dining room. “You came to town after leavin’ him, and you jumped right into a relationship with me. There was no time in between.”
“I never loved him. I was in a bad place when he proposed because Mama just died. I did what I thought I was supposed to.”
“See, that’s what I struggle to understand. How do you know what you want when you just always do what you think you’re supposed to? What everyone else wants of you becomes who you are, Brynlee. Do you think you’re supposed to be with me? Am I just a consolation prize? Someone to be there to take care of you like you were raised if Kevin decides he’s not waitin’ for you to come home anymore?”
