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I’d just pulled a bottle from the cabinet when Mackenzie joined me.
“Heard you on the phone,” she said evenly. “Um, I take it everything’s going well with your inheritance?”
Her words were chosen carefully, but there was a measure of tension in her tone. I didn’t look at her until I’d filled my glass with two fingers of whiskey. When I did, her face was far less controlled. Her brow was drawn together, her lips turned down. There was a pain in her eyes that I wasn’t quite prepared for, and I faltered a little before I spoke.
“Yeah.” I cleared my throat. “Yeah. Vincent just wanted to let me know that everything’s gone through, been approved. I should be home free by the end of next week.”
“I see.”
“It was a lot smoother than I thought it would be.”
“Mm-hm.”
I swallowed.
“Mackenzie—”
“That’s good, then,” she said with false brightness, not letting me get a word in. “That’s great. Means you’ll be able to get out there and be a single man again. And the company will be lucky to have you at the helm.”
Silence.
She kept her eyes on me, her gaze holding mine. What was that expression on her face? Was it a challenge? Was it defeat? I couldn’t tell. I only knew I was put on the spot and put there hard, and my heart pounded in my throat.
That’s great. Means you’ll be able to get out there and be a single man again.
Single. Not married. Not with Mackenzie. The thoughts ran through my brain like a movie reel, repeating over and over and over again.
It wasn’t what I wanted.
But it was what I should do.
I remembered all those years ago, the way Mackenzie had sounded when I’d told her I was leaving. The disappointment and hurt had hit me in the heart just as pointedly as they did now. I had done that to her. In some small way, had a part of me hoped that maybe through this ‘marriage’, I could atone for hurting her the way I had back then? That we could have a second chance?
But the longer the silence between us drew out, the harder Mackenzie’s eyes became. Whatever spark of… something… I’d thought I’d seen in their depths faded. I could see her steeling herself, rebuilding the walls around her heart brick by brick. A memory of the last phone call I’d made to her back when we were just kids flashed through my mind, and I gritted my teeth against the pain it caused.
She had made up her mind back then, and she’d made it up now.
Th
e least I could do was not drag this out. It would be easier for both of us.
I lifted the whiskey to my lips, tipping it back quickly. I kept my eyes on her while I set the empty glass down and nodded.
“Yep. Returning to bachelor life. Been married so long though, I don’t know how well I’ll integrate into single society again.”
My joke was dry, and the reaction from Mackenzie was even dryer. She just looked at me, and in the second after I spoke, I regretted it. Fucking Christ, Walker.
Her throat worked as she swallowed, and then she nodded. Her voice was distant and cool when she answered, almost unrecognizable.
“Yeah. Yeah—totally.”
19
Mackenzie
My mom used to say that testing a man—being indirect with him just to see his reaction—wasn’t the best way to approach a situation. I used to believe her, except for now. Sometimes you needed to see what kind of choice a man would make if he didn’t know where the conversation was going. You needed to see what was going on in his brain. You needed to see what he would do when you led him to water but didn’t force him to drink.
This was it. The end. I should’ve known from the distance that’d sprung up between us this was where Walker and I were headed. It was stupid, and made me more desperate than I liked to admit, but when I had congratulated him on his soon-to-be-single status, a huge part of me had hoped he would say he didn’t want that. That he wasn’t ready to give up what we had.
