He straightens and tries to glare at me.
He tries to speak too, but all that comes out of his mouth are unintelligible words.
Like he’s trying to deny that he went to see Margot last week. For the first time in a couple years, I might add.
He said the magic words—I wish things could’ve been different—and got in her head.
Bad enough my shithead of a father had already planted the idea in Margot’s head that they should get back together onceOliver’s father was out of prison. As if I didn’t have enough I’ll never forgivethatman for.
But after Oliver went to see her?
She’s been texting me all week.
He was under so much stress when we broke up. Do you think I should’ve fought harder for him?
There was something in his eyes when he came to see me. I feel like he was trying to tell me something, but I don’t know what. Do you think he wants to get back together? Like as a real thing again, not as a business arrangement thing?
Would I be an idiot to take him back? I mean, assuming that’s what he’s ultimately after. He didn’t cheat. We had a nice time together and never argued until he broke up with me. We understood each other. Do you know how hard it is to find someone compatible when you’re at the level I’m at in business? And it’s not like I’ll ever give my all to a relationship, so why not marry someone I can tolerate for professional reasons?
My response to every text was the same in spirit: You deserve more than “he didn’t cheat and we had a nice time together so let’s get married and merge the businesses.”
That’s the whole reason I went to his father’s welcome-home party. To find him and tell him to leave her the hell alone.
He hurt her once. He doesn’t get to do it again.
The rest of my family can go to hell, but Margot—she deserves happiness.Realhappiness. The kind that comes from being involved with someone who knows there’s no sacrifice too big, no gesture too small, to show her every day that she is the reason he breathes and that their love will last beyond the existence of time.
She believed in me when the rest of our family didn’t.
I believe in her too, and I want nothing but the very, very best for her heart.
Oliver finally grunts, steps back, and slams the door.
Shit, he has my phone.
My stomach catches up to the possibility that this is a step above the normal trouble I used to get myself into, and it’s knotting as he shoves my phone in his back pocket, then climbs into the driver’s seat.
“May I please have my phone back?” I ask.
“No.”
Inconvenient, but given everything else about this situation, not too surprising. “Why not?”
He ignores me as he buckles in, then turns up the radio right as the symphony is getting to the bridge on my favorite Half-Cocked Heroes song. I lean up and watch as he fiddles with the lever on the steering wheel.
And then I’m flung back into my seat as the SUV lurches unevenly.
Like he doesn’t know how to drive.
Though, honestly—most of the people I grew up with learned to drive so that we could have freedom when we went on vacation, but none of us drove ourselves in the city.
In retrospect, I know it was a great situation for our parents—they always knew where we were and had total control.
Ultimately bad for me for the same reasons.
But in Oliver’s case—he didn’t drive himself at all.
Anywhere.
