I’d blinked.“Uh…”
“It’s all right, Eric.”Her dad had sounded utterly exhausted and disappointed.“I thought she’d grown out of that, but since this is coming out of nowhere and you’re the one telling us…”
Well, fuck. So much for keeping that card up my sleeve. And damn, couldn’t someone havemaybementioned to me that she had that to “grow out of” in the first place? I didn’t ask how many men she’d cheated on in the past or how long it had been since she’d last strayed. It was a moot point now, and anyway, I kind of didn’t want to know.
“She’s on her way?” Jesse’s voice nudged me back into the present.
Swallowing hard, I nodded and pocketed my phone. “They’re leaving the airport now. So… maybe twenty minutes? Half an hour?”
He took and released a deep breath. I didn’t have to ask if he was nervous. The night he’d met us to talk about having a threesome, he’d been chill and confident as if nothing could rattle him. When we’d taken him into our bed, there hadn’t been a trace of nerves.
Today? Oh, he was nervous now.
I could definitely relate. It didn’t matter that I was firmly in the right and nothing she could say would change my mind. I still wasn’t looking forward to the inevitable confrontation. We’d had our fair share of fights, so I’d seen her angry before, and while that hadn’t been fun, I didn’t imagine I’d seen her at“you’re canceling our wedding because I cheated”level angry.
I was too restless to sit still, so I wandered the house, double-checking that I hadn’t left behind anything important. Good thing, too—I found a framed print that I’d had since college and a couple of books that had sentimental value. Those went into my car, and I continued checking for anything I’d missed.
Jesse stayed in the living room, scrolling his phone on the couch. I didn’t blame him. In fact I envied his calm right now. Or maybe he was internally screaming and almost catatonic with nerves. Everyone handled stress differently.
After what seemed like forever, and somehow too soon at the same time, the garage door opener started to rumble.
I immediately pulled my phone out of my pocket. Before the garage door had even started closing again, I’d gone to all of my social media accounts, opened my saved drafts, and posted.
Then I exchanged nods with Jesse. He rose, but he stayed in the living room while I went into the kitchen just in time to greet Selena as she came in from the garage.
In here, there weren’t any visible changes that were likely to tip her off, since most of what I’d taken had been in cabinets and drawers.
Oblivious to the bomb I was about to drop on her, she lugged her suitcase in through the door and met me with a big smile.
“Hey, baby!” she squealed and pushed herself up to kiss me. I accepted the kiss despite the queasiness in my stomach; I didn’t want her to catch on that something was upquiteyet. It was a struggle to hide my feelings, though. There’d been a time when seeing her had given me butterflies, even after as long as we’d been together. Now the sight of her—never mind her touch or her kiss—made me want to throw up.
As she let me go, she gestured over her shoulder. “You cleaned out the garage. It looks amazing!”
I forced a smile. “It was long overdue.”
“Well, it definitely looks—” Her phone pinged with a text. “Oh, hang on a sec!” Before she’d even pulled it out of her purse, it pinged again. Then again. Several texts came in one after the other. Then it started ringing. My phone was probably blowing up, too, but it was on silent in my back pocket.
She stared at her screen before turning to me, eyes wide. “What’s going on?”
“We need to talk.” I gestured at her phone. “That’ll keep.”
The ringtone continued blaring as uneasiness swept over her face. With a worried edge to her voice, she asked again, “What’s going on?”
That was when the floor creaked behind me. Selena looked past me, and in an instant, the uneasiness vanished in favor of horror. She paled, eyes widening. “What… What are you doing here?”
“He’s helping me pick up a few things,” I said evenly. “Because I’m moving out.”
“Moving—” She blinked. “What? But we’re getting married in?—”
“No. We’re not.”
“What? But?—”
“I already made the announcement on social media,” I said as calmly as I could. “That’s probably why everyone’s suddenly trying to reach you.”
Her lips parted. Tears started welling up in her eyes. “What the hell is going on? You’re just—can’t we talk about this? What are?—”
“There’s nothing to talk about.” I nodded toward Jesse. “He already told me everything.”
