Page 96 of Robbin’ the Rich

Then I forced myself to take a step backward. "We have nothing left to say."

The words hurt. I think they hurt him too. For a second he looked like he might argue. Instead, he just stood there, broken-hearted and silent beneath the fading November sunlight.

I turned away before I could change my mind.

Then I walked out of the parking lot. I didn’t know where I was going, I just needed to be anywhere but here.

21

MICAH

The moment Robin pushed through the dining room doors, I knew I had about thirty seconds before everything fell apart completely.

For one frozen moment after she stood up, I remained in my chair, staring at the doorway she'd disappeared through while the rest of the table sat in stunned silence. My mother looked confused. My father looked concerned. Someone asked if everything was alright.

The question was almost laughable. Nothing was alright, but I had the tiniest thread of hope I could fix it.

In the end I was alone as I stood in the parking lot and watched the woman I'd spent weeks falling in love with walk out of the parking lot.

I remained there long after she was gone, staring at the empty space she'd left behind and wishing I'd found the courage to tell her the truth before all of this.

The rational part of my brain understood that chasing after her would have been a terrible idea. She’d been blindsided. She was hurt and angry and had every right to feel that way. Nothing I said in a restaurant parking lot was going to untangle weeks of omission or convince her that I wasn't the person she currently believed me to be.

Unfortunately, the rational part of my brain was losing badly to the part that wanted to get in my car and follow her anyway. I kept replaying the look on her face. The betrayal I saw that gutted me and was also entirely my fault.

That was when I noticed someone standing in the doorway.

My younger brother leaned against the brick wall beside the entrance with his hands shoved into his pockets. He must have come outside at some point during the argument, though I'd been too distracted to notice. The restaurant's lights spilled out around him, turning him into a dark silhouette against the glass.

“What do you want?”

"That looked bad."

“Yeah… It wasn’t great.”

Growing up, my younger brother and I had occupied similar roles within the family hierarchy. Neither of us had been the chosen successor. That honor belonged to our older brother, who had embraced church leadership with the enthusiasm of someone who genuinely enjoyed meetings. The two of us had always been the disappointments. I'd simply been better at hiding it.

"Is that why you've been missing family stuff?"

Eventually I sighed. "Partly."

He nodded slowly. The answer clearly wasn't surprising.

"Partly?"

I looked back toward the empty parking lot.

The cold had settled deeper now, carrying the sharp bite that always arrived in late November. Families moved in and out of the restaurant behind us, laughing and carrying leftovers, completely unaware that my life had imploded fifteen minutes earlier.

"I've been seeing her for a while."

His eyebrows rose.

"A while?"

"Almost two months."

The whistle he let out was low and impressed. "Damn. And she had no clue who your family was?"