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“Sounds wonderful,” I said, trying to keep my voice even.
I felt like I had been punched in the gut. I was managing a smile but only just barely. I searched my heart to figure out what exactly was hurting about it, but I wasn’t even sure. I didn’t love Trevor, at least not anymore. I wasn’t even sure I ever really had.
It wasn’t about him so much as it was how Jade had just replaced me in this charmed life. How she had just taken over where I was supposed to have been. I should be the one having a beautiful destination wedding where I got to feel like a princess on a white steed, riding off to the sunset with my cowboy husband.
But that was the thing. I didn’t care about the husband himself. I was just mad about the fantasy. The ceremony and excitement of the life that I felt like I should have had, the one that Jade had wormed her way into and forced me out of. Not to mention the betrayal of my supposed best friend.
“Congratulations,” I forced out. “It sounds lovely.”
“It is,” she sighed.
She nearly fell off the horse as she looked up for the first time on the ride, and I pulled back on the lead that I was using to walk Bentley around with. It was only her first lesson, so she wasn’t riding alone yet, which meant I needed to be there to listen to her blab on and on. At least in future lessons, if I could stomach them, she would be able to just take Bentley around the track, and I could sit in the center and shout out instructions. Or force Camden to make good on his promise that I wouldn’t have to lead her lessons if I didn’t want to.
“Easy,” I said, touching Bentley’s shoulder to get him to calm down. He did so at the touch, and Jade looked down at me with a look that somehow combined wonder and jealousy.
“Anyway,” she said, adjusting the helmet that she had brought with her, emblazoned with the word bride on it, “so what about you? Are you seeing anyone?”
“Of course,” my mouth said, without any apparent consultation with the rest of my brain. “I sure am.”
“Oh?” she asked.
Panicked, I wondered how I was going to get out of that one. I had been so distracted and so determined to not look like a loser that it had just blurted out of me. But this was Jade I was talking to. I couldn’t just make this up. She would see right through it. The ‘he goes to another school, you wouldn’t know him’ defense was going to be torn right through, and I would look even more pathetic than I already was. Here she was getting married in this beautiful wedding to my ex-boyfriend that she’d stolen, and I was rapidly hurtling toward my thirties, alone and with no prospects.
I couldn’t let her win like that.
“Tell me,” she said. “What’s he like? Is it anyone I know?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “He’s nice. And tall. Really tall. And muscular.”
“Ooh,” she said. “What’s he do for a living?”
“Hmm?” I said, desperate to find a way to give myself a few seconds to think. If I pretended, I didn’t hear her, it gave me an extra second.
“Your boyfriend,” she said.
“What about him?”
“What does he do? For a career?”
“Oh, he…”
I was desperate. Anything would do. I just needed to come up with something.
My eyes glanced into the distance, and I saw the back door of the house open. Mark stepped out, looking around with that big smile he had. He stretched and yawned.
“He’s a doctor,” I finished. “Hang on, I’ll be right back.”
“A doctor?” Jade asked, a hint of disappointment in her voice. “Really?”
“Stay here. Don’t move,” I said, pulling on the lead and wrapping it around the post nearest us. Jade was facing the house as I jogged over to where Mark was coming toward us. He saw me and smiled.
How was I going to sell this? I needed him to go along with it and be convincing.
“I am really sorry about this,” I muttered as I got within hearing distance. I looked over my shoulder to where Jade was sitting on Bentley, watching me, then back to Mark. “Please just go with it. I’ll explain later.”
“Explain what?” he asked, but just as the words were out of his mouth, I was on my toes, pressing my lips to his.
10
MARK
Carmela’s lips were soft, and she smelled like an intoxicating combination of berries, jasmine, and dirt. It was a curious combination, but one that stirred something deep inside me and made my entire body harden. When she pulled away, and I started to regain some sense of the rest of the world around us, I could hear a squealing, giggling sound from inside the paddock. I looked up to see a woman that I also vaguely recognized in a general sort of way on top of a horse.
