CHAPTER9
“I can’t believe Tucker did that. What an asshole.” Abbie’s voice was anything but calm, and even over the phone Megan knew her best friend would be gesturing angrily as she spoke. She’d sent Abbie a text with some of the details and her friend had called immediately.
“I mean, yeah okay, he’s your older brother and he wanted to protect you – fine. But to go as far as threaten Caleb to stay away from you? That’s so…movie-level cliché andstupid. There were so many other ways he could have handled it.”
Megan knew Abbie meant well, but fury still boiled in Megan’s gut. “He should have stayed out of it.”
“That would have been a good idea, too.” Abbie was quiet for a few extra moments. “Meg?”
“Yeah?”
“What do you think would have happened if you hadn’t overheard Tucker when you did?”
The memory of Caleb asking her to dinner flashed through her mind. She’d been more than ready to sleep with him again in that moment, like they’d been doing all week.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, what was the plan for after the wedding is over?” The gentleness in Abbie’s voice suggested the hesitation she had in asking.
But Megan didn’t have an answer. Not a real one.
She’d barely said yes to dinner with Caleb before everything came to light. Megan wanted to bring up the possibility of more but was afraid he’d say that he didn’t want anything serious, and he’d certainly never mentioned the topic.
“I don’t know.” It was the truth. “We didn’t really talk about it.” No, instead they’d spent their precious stolen moments grasping frantically for pleasure.
Megan sighed. “We probably should have talked about it.”
“Yeah, probably. But also, maybe it’s okay that you didn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, if you had and decided to keep seeing each other or were getting serious or whatever, what do you think would have happened when Tucker found out?”
“Probably the same thing that happened.” Megan thought it through. “But also, probably worse at that point.”
“So, better to know now, right? Before it got serious?”
“Right.”
Except it had always been serious for Megan. She’d been half in love with Caleb for the last decade, no matter how hard she tried not to feel that way. No other guy she dated had ever measured up, and she’d tried to settle for less, to convince herself that it wasn’t actually settling. But it never lasted longer than a few months, maybe a year.
Megan had no idea how her heart was going to recover from the double betrayal. It didn’t seem likely to happen any time soon.
But Abbie didn’t know any of that.
“What are you going to do now?”
Megan wiped the last of the silent tears away and took a shaky breath. “I’m going to cry a little more, shower, get ready for bed and then tomorrow go to the rehearsal and dinner and be a great bridesmaid for Rose.”
There was no denying that more tears were on the way, and Megan didn’t bother hiding it. She would let herself fall apart tonight. Then tomorrow she’d shove aside her heartbreak and focus on Rose.
She would wait until her cousin had her happily-ever-after; then Megan would figure out how to pick up the pieces of her own heart.
