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I didn’t know what was going on in his life. I didn’t know what was really happening with Miranda. But this wasn’t acceptable.
I clenched my hands into fists and stood from the table.
Landon had made an idiot out of me.
I knew I’d been right the first time. I’d left Austin’s house last night, visibly upset about what I’d come to realize. Landon and Miranda had shit to work out, and I’d happened to be the closest person for him to channel his anger into. That was all it had been.
When he’d called this morning, I’d thought that maybe I’d read the situation wrong. Maybe I shouldn’t have left last night. Maybe we could see where things could go between us. Maybe he did want me.
Now, I had to keep my hands from shaking. I was so angry with him. He’d proven me right, and I didn’t like it at all.
I stormed out of the restaurant and back to my car. My breathing was coming out in furious hyperventilating-induced sputters. In all my life and all the horrible dates I’d been on, I’d never once been stood up and made to feel this stupid.
I turned over the ignition as my phone started vibrating next to me. I almost ignored it. If it were Landon, he was too little, too late. I was an afterthought. I wasn’t important enough to even be told that he couldn’t make it. I didn’t want to talk to someone who could treat me that way.
But my hand reached out, and I looked at the screen anyway.
A sigh escaped me when I saw that it was Emery, not Landon. Somehow, I had still gotten my hopes up that it was him. But I had to put that all away now. I couldn’t let Emery know why I was so upset. Landon was off-limits. He was not a conversation I wanted to have with my best friend.
I answered the call, “Hello?”
“Hey! I just got home. Where are you?” Emery asked.
“I went to get some food but lost my appetite and didn’t eat anything.”
“That’s lame. You should probably eat something. Want me to make you something at home?”
“No, that’s okay.” I really was not hungry any longer. My anger had burned away my need for food. “What’s up?”
“I have so much to dish to you. I wanted to tell you as soon as I got home. Are you going to be out long?”
“I’m on my way home actually,” I said as I turned over the ignition and pulled out of my parking spot. “Be there in, like, ten minutes.”
“Okay. Well, I can’t wait that long,” Emery said. “Miranda showed up at Jensen’s house this morning.”
I gasped as everything seemed to crystallize, “Miranda? Like…Landon’s wife?” My voice was brittle, as if I were a cracked eggshell, ready to shatter.
“Yeah. Like the crazy bitch lady who screams at me every time she sees me even though she knows that Jensen and I are together and I have no interest in Landon. She’s a total monster. Jensen detests her, to put it mildly.”
“What was she doing there?” I managed to get out as I drove blindly across town. I couldn’t recall any of the drive. Stoplights and traffic signals and lane changes had all happened, but I was on autopilot.
“She was looking for Landon, but as you know, this trip, he’s staying with Austin, not Jensen.”
“Right.” Because I’d gotten his drunk ass home last night. “But…what did she want?”
“Not sure. What I gathered from her clipped conversation with Jensen was that they’d had an argument, Landon had threatened to leave her, and she was here to make things right. Whatever the hell that means.”
“Yeah,” I whispered.
Miranda was here to make things right. And, now, Landon wasn’t returning my calls or answering any of my messages.
My throat felt dry and cracked. My hands were stiff on the steering wheel. My heart constricted painfully.
Of course.
Of course this was what it was.
It was as if those messages I had read last night on Landon’s phone and the conclusion I had drawn from them came true. Landon wasn’t leaving Miranda. Landon was never going to leave Miranda. Even Emery had said that Landon had only threatened it. He wasn’t really going to follow through.
