“Okay.” I throw my hands in the air. If I can’t defuse this situation, this bed of grass won’t be the only thing crumpled beneath his boots.
“I’ve known her since we werefourteen,” he explains.
“You’re right; I don’t know her. I didn’t want Hailey to have to be the one to tell you. Don’t be mad at her, okay? She wanted to, there’s just?—”
“No right time to drop a bomb in someone’s lap that their girlfriend is cheating on them. Thanks, rookie. I got it.” He chucks his saw on the dried crop and stomps away.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
HAILEY
“You saw Madison at Grenaldough’s?”
Dean storms toward me, kicking over a bale of hay. My eyes widen at his volume and then shrink beneath his intense gaze.
Reed told him.
I glance around.
“Looking for your boyfriend?”
“We wanted to tell you, but?—”
“But what, Hayes? I’m not privy to that kind of information from you anymore? I know I screwed up with us, but you’ve known for years how I feel about Madison.”
“I know,” I say, tugging on his arm as he pushes past me. Digging the heels of my boots into the ground does nothing but drag me along with him.
He could scream in my face. Heshouldscream in my face. But even that wouldn’t devastate me quite so much as his watering eyes and sagging head.
“Then why didn’t you say anything?” he whispers.
What’s worse than blindsiding him? Answeringthatquestion.
“Because…”
Think, think, think.
“You used to tell it like it is.”
Not about this I didn’t. But he wants honesty?
“It’s not like we’ve been talking. And I’ve always hated her, okay? She’s never deserved you.”
He glares at me. Ditches his gear in a pile and busies himself with his sleeping arrangement. “That wasn’t so hard, now was it?”
“Dean, please,” I plead, reaching for him a second time and drawing my hand back after I discover he’s already flattened out his sleeping bag and is zipping himself inside.
“I need some space.” He rolls to his side and I have no choice but to honor his wishes.
I’m several yards in the opposite direction before I’m berating myself. I should have told him. What was I waiting for, a moment that wouldn’t hurt as much? Well, that moment doesn’t exist.
“Red?”
I must look ready to claw my own eyes out. He’s approaching me slowly.
“I told you I would tell him,” I say to Reed.
He cradles me against him. “I’m sorry. I was trying to protect you.”
