“Were you this mean in high school?”
“No,” she snapped.
That tracked, at least. She’d been in Thea’s class, but surely he’d remember a freshman girl with white-blond hair storming around the hallways and scaring the shit out of everybody.
She stared him down for a long moment, then the starch leaked out of her spine and she steepled her fingers, inhaled deeply, and spoke in a slow, patient voice. “Sorry. Okay. Let’s have a conversation.”
“Must we?” Now that he had a layer of food in his stomach, he reached for the whiskey again, but she moved it out of his reach and rummaged through his cabinets. She pulled down two rocks glasses etched with the Murdoch Construction logo, a companywide gift from his mom a few Christmases ago, and poured a finger for each of them.
“We can at least be civilized.” She handed his drink over. “Now. Explain to me why the nicest person I know has spent the past two weeks in tears while refusing to explain why.”
He brought the glass to his lips and drained the contents, but the burn in his throat didn’t make the answers flow any easier.
“I had a damn plan,” he finally said.
“Yeah. The fake relationship. I warned her that shit would blow up in your faces.” She held up her glass in a smug salute and sipped.
“Not that plan.Thatplan went great, thank you very much.” He reached for the bottle to pour another round, and when she slid it out of reach, he gestured impatiently. “You’re the one who barged into my house. You want me to talk, you keep pouring.”
She raised her brows but uncapped the bottle and tilted it into his glass.
“The fake relationship was great. Best relationship of my life actually.” He stared down at the amber liquid. “I wanted to make it real. She didn’t. The end.”
“And that was your whole damn plan? ‘Make it real’?”
“Well, yeah.” He pushed the glass away with the liquid untouched. Whiskey wasn’t going to magically fix this. “The plan was to just… stay together. We make a great team.” He rolled his head from side to side to stretch out the muscles he’d strained during his wall-removal session earlier.
“Wow. Is that how you tried to sell it to her?”
“No. I asked her to come work with me at Murdoch Construction too. And…” Was he really going to spill everything to this person he barely knew? Then again, it wasn’t like he had anything else left to lose. “I told her I love her, okay? And not only did she not say it back, but it clearly pissed her off. So yeah. That’s what your best friend did to me.”
If he was expecting sympathy, he’d missed the stud with his drill because Faith’s eyes widened in horror. “You offered her apermanent job? My dude, do you evenknowher?”
“Yes,” he snapped. “I know her really fucking well. Enough that I thought…”
“Thought that she loved you too.” Faith’s voice gentled, and she tilted her head to swallow her last mouthful of whiskey, a purr rolling through her throat as the liquid hit her tongue. A year ago, he’d have asked her to stick around for another drink to see how the night might progress. She was tall and blond and thick in all the interesting places. But even if she hadn’t been Thea’s best friend, the thought held no appeal for him anymore.
“She made me think I could be more than my reputation,” he said softly, staring into his glass. “And the more I opened myself up to the idea, the more I realized that my parents, my brother, my friends, they all believed I could be the guy in the relationship.Ieven let myself believe it. But in the end, she didn’t.”
He pressed his fingers to his eyes, pushing back against the searing emptiness as he considered his life without her. Once he’d wrestled himself under control, he glanced up to find Faith watching him with a pitying expression. But the instant his eyes met hers, her jaw hardened, and she set her glass down on the polished concrete countertop with a click.
“Here’s the thing. I’m not here to spill her secrets or give you some kind of pep talk. I only came here to kick your ass if it needed kicking, but you’re just… kind of pathetic actually.” She swept her gaze over him, clearly confident in her ability to throw down against a guy who’d strained his rotator cuff working a sledgehammer earlier in the day. “And it sounds like you were arrogant enough that you kicked your own ass the last time the two of you talked. So I guess you and I are good.”
“Arrogant?”He’d been a lot of things in that last conversation, but arrogant?
She looked at him incredulously. “Um, yes. Did you think declaring your love was enough to cut through twenty years of Thea’s relationship aversion and abandonment fears?”
His jaw worked back and forth as he considered her words. “I assumed…”
The words died in his throat. Oh, had he assumed. He’d assumedalloverthe place. Assumed that Thea loved him back. Assumed she wanted him, wanted tobewith him for the long term. Assumed the privilege of his company would be enough to get her over her lifelong fear of commitment. But in the end, whatever misplaced hero worship Thea had for him at the beginning of the deal hadn’t matured into anything approaching the overwhelming love he felt for her. And he’d selfishly only considered the ways the relationship would makehislife better.
“Now you’re getting it.” Faith set her empty glass in the sink next to his plate. “Okay then. You can keep the rest of the bottle.” She turned and left the kitchen as briskly as she’d entered it fifteen minutes earlier.
“Wait!” He followed her to the door. “That’s it?”
“Yeah,” she said impatiently as she rooted through her bag for her keys. “I’m not your fairy godmother. I’m not here to fix things for you.” And with that, she was gone.
“You’re a shitty fairy godmother,” he muttered, wandering back to the kitchen. He replaced the cap on the whiskey bottle and stashed it with the rest of his liquor collection as he turned Faith’s words over in his head.
