Ilikedher, liked her, and I saw this jerk as a threat to my claim on her. But I had no claim on her. I was here to correct a mistake, not kindle a romance, but trying to tell myself that felt physically painful.
"Baby, I'm sorry." Brandon looked at me again, then turned his full attention on Lainey. If I wasn't mistaken, this apology seemed overly dramatic. It was like he feared the reason I was here was to sweep her off her feet. I'd say it was absurd, but the fact that a man like me would show up out of the blue at her place of work was absurd anyway.
"Lanes, I didn't mean it. She meant nothing. You're my everything, baby. Please forgive me."
Ouch, watching him grovel was disgusting. And he wasn't even good at it. He didn't drop to one knee or tear open his shirt or anything. This was just an act, and it sickened me. I was having a more and more difficult time trying to restrain myself.
"Please, just leave," Lainey muttered.
"Baby, I swear," Brandon said, taking her wrist. He clung to her and she pulled away, but he wouldn’t back off. Lainey tugged at her own arm, but he only held her tighter until I stepped up.
"Look, buddy, I don’t know what your problem is, but she doesn't want to be touched." I put my hand on his chest and he let go of her to shove me hard, making me stumble back into my car.
"Who do you think you are?” Now his attention was on me, backing me up until I had no choice but to stand my ground. I pushed him back and he came at me again.
"She doesn't want to be touched, okay? So back off..."
"Since when do you get to decide what she wants? Why are you here? What do you want with Lainey?" He grabbed me by the collar of my shirt so I shoved him again, this time pushing him backward toward his Rover.
"Maybe I want what's best for her, huh? Unlike you. Sleeping with another woman just days before your wedding? What sort of douche move is that?" I kept pushing, backing him up, and my temper lit up hotter than the Fourth of July. "While you were drinking away your sorrow, I was screwing your would-be wife! What do you think of that, huh? That I screwed your wife on your wedding night and there's nothing you can do about it."
I heard her gasp the same time I saw his fist coming at my face, and the two connected in my mind about the same time. The blow hurt. There was a lot of force behind that. In a one-to-one fight, he'd nail me to the wall probably, maybe a body builder or athlete, but it was my heart that hurt worse.
"Oh my god, Kade!" Lainey groaned, but my face hurt too bad for me to look up and check the expression on her face. It didn't sound like a mortified groan though; it sounded like an angry one.
"What's he saying?" Brandon growled. "What's he talking about, Lainey!"
"I don’t know! God!"
"Tell me why he said that. Did you sleep with him?" I managed to get my eyes to function again just in time to see the whites of Brandon's eyes as they bore down on Lainey.
"You cheated on me! You jerk! You slept with a different woman and I found out seconds before I was supposed to walk down the aisle." Her chest heaved, and it looked like she might throw up. "If you can cheat, I can cheat. And so I did." She spouted off a few expletives and backed away as Brandon stomped on the flowers he'd brought for her.
"Oh God, we're so done. I'm done with you. And you can kiss your precious bakery funding goodbye." He turned and climbed back into his SUV and took off, narrowly missing me by an inch, but the damage was done.
I shouldn’t have come here and I definitely shouldn’t have said that to him.
Turning, I watched Lainey dissolve into tears, shaking. Her hands covered her face in mortification, and I knew it was all my fault. I felt horrible.
"Lainey, I'm so sorry." I reached for her, hoping to comfort her because it appeared that maybe she didn't want what just happened. I had crossed a line by saying those things, but to me it didn’t look like that showdown was welcome. Brandon had no clue what went on between me and her, which meant she hadn’t told them about the wedding or the marriage either.
Unfortunately when I caressed her cheek and tried to push a stray hair from her face, she recoiled like I'd burned her.
"Don't touch me." Her hands dropped, eyes popping open. "Stay away from me."
Lainey turned her back on me and stormed away, climbing into that old beat-up Toyota and taking off just as fast as the jerk in the Rover had.
It left me confused and frustrated, because the very same instant I realized I was falling for the girl, I got it handed to me on a silver platter that I was not wanted at all.
No one ever rejected me.
Ever.
"Wow..." I mumbled, running a hand through my hair and watching her taillights vanish. Not at all how I saw that going.
12
LAINEY
