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Except I don’t want him to change. I don’t want him to prove anything. I want him to walk away.

* * *

I’m nearly an hour late by the time I find Brendan, sitting at a table with friends. We haven’t been out with other people since the disastrous party a few weeks back, so I approach warily. He stands and pulls out the chair beside him, which I guess means he’s not going to act like he doesn’t know me tonight, but it’s a little sad that I’ve got the bar set so low.

“So what happened?” he asks, pouring me a beer. “You were supposed to be here an hour ago.”

“Sorry,” I sigh. “Rob called.”

The softness leaves his face. “It’s the middle of the night there. And I thought you told him not to call.”

“I did.”

He sets the pitcher down heavily. “So is this first time you’ve heard from him?” It sounds like an accusation, which is ridiculous—he’s the one who doesn’t want a relationship. How can it possibly matter if I’ve spoken to Rob before?

“No,” I say, a little defensively.

It feels like I can’t win with Brendan sometimes. He wouldn’t even be spending time with me right now if he knew I’d called it off with Rob for good. These are his rules. He can’t get mad at me for following them.

“So what did he want?”

I sigh, running a finger over the condensation on my mug. “Just to talk.”

“Talk about what?” he asks, his voice tight.

I frown. “I don’t know. Just stuff. What’s going to happen when he comes home, that kind of thing.”

He sets his glass down, too hard, and his chair scrapes the floor as he pushes away from the table. "I'm gonna get another round,” he announces. He doesn’t even glance at me as he goes, just leaves me there with a bunch of people I barely know, all of them pretending not to notice the sudden tension between us.

His friends continue their conversation but I struggle to follow it. I’m too busy trying to figure out what the hell just happened.

Is he pissed? He seems it, but why? He’s the one who doesn’t want a relationship, who brings me out with him and acts like I’m his sister.

I glance toward him at the bar. He’s not alone—there’s a ridiculously beautiful girl hanging all over him. Literally. She’s got one hand on his shoulder and the other on his arm, leaning against him. And he might not be encouraging it, but he sure as hell doesn’t appear to be discouraging it.

My blood begins to pulse behind my ears. The roar is so loud, I can barely hear anything, although the sound of Brendan returning to his seat is as explosive as a detonating bomb.

“You guys remember Paulina?” he asks, introducing the girl from the bar.

The night is warm, but suddenly I’m shivering, the fair hair on my arms standing on end.

I knew one day Brendan would be done with me and return to girls exactly like Paulina, the same kind of girls he always left with back when I was in school. I just didn’t realize it would feel like this, that it would cut this way and rob me of breath and leave me half blind. And I didn’t realize it was going to happen now, in front of me. Him bringing that girl here hurts more than anything Rob did in all of our years together. The pain begins inside me, a laceration that starts mid-chest and slices backward to the base of my spine.

Brendan and his friends are moving around, trying to make room for Paulina at the table. A part of me doesn’t want to give up my ground, wants to stay here and fight for him, charm him, lure him back. But I will not lower myself to fighting for a man, especially one who’s treating me the way Brendan is right now, and my anger is on the cusp of turning to tears—just the kind of crazy, emotional response Brendan dreads from any female.

“Take my chair,” I tell her, rising, the words as small and cold as chips of ice.

“Where are you going?” Brendan asks.

I stare at him, not even trying to hide my disgust. “Anywhere you aren’t.”

I walk out of the bar, so angry I can’t even think. I pull up Uber on my phone, determined to get back to Harper’s before I make an even bigger ass of myself than I just did inside.

I’m still waiting for them to locate a driver when the phone is wrenched from my hand.

“Give me my phone,” I demand.

“No,” Brendan says, moving toward the back of the lot. I assume that’s where his Jeep is parked, but it’s too dark in back to say for sure.