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“I guess hanging around deserted country lanes at night alone increase your chances of meeting one,” I mutter, placing the remote on the sofa.
She ignores my dig about last night. I still can’t believe she would be so careless with her own safety. If anything had happened to her…
“Attraction is just dopamine.” She sniffs, tightening her arms around herself. “Cause and effect, nothing more. A perceived high in our body from a chemical change. That’s what love is. Just a chemical.”
“Chemical, sure.” I allow myself the brief indulgence of staring into her light blue eyes. “Whatever you say.”
She follows behind me as I walk to the door.
“You don’t agree?”
I turn, leaning back on the closed door, crossing my arms over my chest, mirroring her pose as I sigh. Like usual, she isn’t going to leave this.
“Look, it’s not for me to tell you what love is. That’s for you to decide. You want to not believe in it? Fine. You want to think it’s a load of shit? Fine. You want to marry the first guy who tells you he loves you? Fine. You want to live alone with a load of cats and have a house that reeks of piss? Fine. It’s your life, Rose.”
Anything is fine with me.
I’m lying out of my ass. The idea of her having anything less than what she deserves and what will make her happy is like a gut-punch.
She’s better than all of it.
Her mouth drops open, her forehead wrinkling before she snaps it shut and glares at me.
“I like cats.”
“Okay,” I say slowly. Not the reaction I was expecting.
“And I would have married him if he’d asked.”
Hang on, what?
“Who?” I grit, hating the fucker already. If there’s a guy who Rose could have seen herself marrying, then why is she here arguing with me on the other side of the Atlantic? Why did she need time away? Daisy never mentioned an ex. Just family issues since losing her dad.
“It doesn’t matter.” Her shoulders drop as she looks away. “He wasn’t who I thought he was after everything.”
I maintain my position, leaning back against her door with my arms crossed, studying her. From the outside, I probably look calm. But inside, I’m burning up with rage from the way her body and voice have crumpled. I hate to see women upset. Maybe it’s the big brother in me.
“And who was that?” I ask, not sure I want to know the answer.
Rose brings her shining eyes back to mine and shrugs her shoulders. She’s trying to play it down. Whatever happened with this guy obviously hurt her. This is the most rattled I’ve seen her.
“My ex, Gareth. We were together since I was eighteen. I thought we were going to have it all together, you know? Marriage, kids, house in the suburbs.” She looks at the floor, pushing at a piece of fluff on the carpet with her toe. “Then one day, he said he was taking a promotion in Washington. Alone.” Her brows quirk as she continues fussing with the carpet. “We’d only moved in together the month before, and we had… we’d…” She sighs with a humorless laugh. “Never mind. That’s too much info. Let’s just say he knew… He knew a while before he told me. And he let me believe differently. I made choices based on what I thought we had. When it was all a lie… I was stupid.”
“No, you weren’t. He was a prick.”
Her eyes widen as they pop up to meet mine.
“He was,” I state again, because she needs to hear it. What kind of guy takes a new job and moves states without talking to his long-term girlfriend first?
A prick, like I said.
“I…” She studies me, uncrossing her arms. “Maybe he was. But I still made mistakes I can’t take back now.”
“So move forward. You can’t change the past, but you can carve your future.”
She stares at me again like I’m talking another language she doesn’t understand.
“You have no idea about the mistakes I’ve made, Dax. And I don’t just mean letting Gareth…” She screws her face up, squeezing her eyes shut as her voice cracks. “Letting him trick me like that. I’ve made a lot. I’ve fucked up and hurt people. Sometimes I think I don’t deserve to—”
