I sigh, locking my hands in a cradle behind my head. “I know.” Iridescent flecks in the popcorn ceiling reflect greenish light cutting through the top of the drape. “You know what tomorrow should be?”
“What?”
I take a deep breath, exhaling it slowly. “My first wedding anniversary.”
Everly
Hold still, heart.
My brain runs wild. He mentioned an ex, not a fiancée—or a wife, for that matter. My fingers curl around the top of the sheet. “What, um…what happened?”
Sleet plinks on the aluminum. “My ex—Becca—waited until two days before the wedding to decide I wasn’t the guy for her.”
Wait. Left at the altar? “Oh, Knox. Why ever would she do that?” Some women don’t know a good thing even when they hold it in their hands.
His silence feels deep and lasts so long I can practically feel the mound of hurt piled up like shoveled snow. Finally, he huffs. “I wasn’t classy enough for her.”
Oh my goodness. “Shesaidthat?” Apparently this Becca person never saw the man attired for a swanky Christmas party. Or noticed him opening her doors or sweeping her into his arms when she couldn’t walk.
Little could have disposed me to be a fan of his ex, but I now dislike the woman by new orders of magnitude.
He sighs. I picture his hand tousling the waves he’d combed into order at the beginning of the night. “In a backhanded way, but yeah, pretty much. She’d always complained about mud when I got in the car, or dirt under my fingernails when we’d grab dinner after work. That kind of stuff.”
“Well, what did she expect? You work at construction sites all day.”
“And that was a problem for her. She said she didn’t want a guy who, and I quote, ‘played in the dirt for a living’.”
“You’re kidding? Shesaidthat? Those exact words?”
He’s quiet.
My brain clicks into gear. I said the same thing, didn’t I? Or something very close. “Knox, when I said…whatever I said…I was joking around. I promise.”
“I know you were. I know you didn’t mean it the way she did.” A sigh drifts up from the floor. “You know, if that’s how she felt, fine, but it sure seems like she could have figured things out before invitations were sent to five hundred of our closest friends.”
Probably missing the point, my brain lodges on the massive number of invitees. “Wow. Yeah. I should think so.”
“It was humiliating.”
Of course it must have been, waving off…five hundred people?
Knox doesn’t strike me as a proud man, nothing beyond the healthy, normal-human amount of proud, anyway. My heart rolls with a dull ache. “And hurtful,” I say softly.
The blanket rustles. “I’m fine.”
“Of course you are, but that doesn’t mean the whole thing didn’t suck.”
He coughs as much as laughs, easing the mood that’s stretched taut. “Yeah. It sucked bad.” The way the trajectory of his voice shifts, I think he turns his head. “And you know what sucks even worse?”
“What’s that?”
“You know who Becca decidedwasclassy enough for her?”
A bad feeling fists up my gut. “Who?”
His sigh comes out angry, hurt, and resigned. “My brother.”
My gasp must be loud enough to wake the neighbors. “No.”
