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“Not sure why I was convinced till this point that you hadn’t Googled me. What exactly did you look at?”
“Well… the interview,” I started nervously. “The one where you talked about Pattie. And then…”
“The video in the comments. About Tim.”
“Yes, but I closed it out before I finished because I didn’t necessarily believe it was – ”
“True? It was,” he said harshly, pausing as if to take some kind of sick pleasure in the look of shock on my face. “Tim’s the varsity baseball coach at our old high school. He was leaving his house in the morning for work when I caught him.”
“And… you hit him?”
“That would be an understatement.”
My stomach turned.
“What did you do?”
“I blacked out, so I don’t remember.”
“You were drunk?”
“No. I was angry,” Drew enunciated. “I don’t remember anything but his neighbors pulling me away. And thinking I probably killed him.”
I stared at Drew, completely and utterly speechless.
I wasn’t sure if I was more horrified by how badly he’d beaten his childhood best friend, or the fact that he spoke now with such a frighteningly cold lack of remorse. It felt almost as if he were challenging me, punishing me now with more details than I wanted because I had forced him to prove that he cried.
I’d forced him to admit that he was human, and now he was doing everything in his power to prove that I was wrong.
“Drew… I don’t understa
nd. Why the hell did you do it?” I finally whispered, though I could barely even hear myself above the volume of my own slamming heart. “That was Pattie’s son. That was your best friend.”
“He betrayed my trust.”
God, not Tim too.
“What did he do?”
“I don’t talk about that.”
“You can’t just say that after telling me everything you just did!” I hissed incredulously.
“I can and I will because I never intended on discussing any of that with you. You just needed to know. You needed to believe that love conquers all, or some other happy sunshine bullshit,” Drew said coldly. “But at the end of the day, I have my views and you have yours, so let’s just agree to disagree. In case you don’t remember, we don’t actually have to compromise about shit. Just because that’s a real diamond doesn’t mean this is a real engagement.”
You asshole.
I wanted to snatch off my stupid fake engagement ring and throw it right then and there. Seriously. Were it not for the fact that people were watching, I probably would have.
But as increasingly angry I was, I told myself to stay cool. I breathed deep despite suddenly realizing that the blurred lines of our contract didn’t mean I was anywhere closer to Drew. Just because I’d opened up to him didn’t mean he’d open up to me because clearly, a double standard existed between us.
And I shouldn’t have been remotely surprised.
Drew Maddox was used to getting his way. What he wanted he got, and what he had right now was both business and pleasure. He got all of me, I got maybe half of him, and that was just the way it worked in his world.
At least until this very moment.
Because as our entrees came – as Drew turned to smile and talk to the manager who dropped by to ask how things were – I decided to quietly take another page from his book and flip a switch. I wasn’t one for double standards so as of this moment, I was going to have to change the way I approached this game.
