“And are you being calm about the contracts you walked away from, too?”
I swallowed hard and waited.
He let out a sharp breath and ran a hand through his hair. Normally so neatly groomed, it stood out at all angles. He looked tired and irritated. He did not look heartbroken. Not that I’d expected him to.
His jaw flexed.
“I had to stand there and answer questions that I had no answers for,” he continued, his voice rising. “From your parents, the vendors. All the people who drove in from the city.”
“You mean, the investors?”
A low growl rumbled from his throat. He turned away from me. When he faced me again, I could tell he was working hard to keep himself in check. “Do you have any idea how difficultit is to try to smooth things over while everyone is trying to pretend that I haven’t just been completely humiliated?”
“I didn’t ask you to do that.”
“No,” he said cooly. “You didn’t ask me anything. That’s the whole problem.”
I took a sip of my coffee, more to give myself something to do than anything else. “I shouldn’t have run out the way I did,” I said. “But I did try to talk to you about all of this before.”
“And you agreed to the wedding,” he pointed out unnecessarily. “I told you what it would mean for your investment. And it’s not justyourinvestment, Jess.”
I didn’t need the reminder.
I shook my head. “I couldn’t go through with it,” I said slowly. “I couldn’t keep pretending it was something it wasn’t.”
Trevor studied me for a long moment, then nodded once. “Fine,” he said. “If youcan’t pretend, we need to talk about what happens next.”
There it was.
I’d been waiting for that. There was no doubt that he already had multiple contingency plans in mind.
“I’m not marrying you.”
“Yeah.” He rolled his eyes. “I got that. But that doesn’t mean we’re going to burn everything down just because you got cold feet.”
“It wasn’t?—”
“It doesn’t matter.”
He was so cold and controlled, I had a hard time reconciling him to the man I’d met and fallen for once upon a time. I’d been so naive. So foolish to think that his love bombing and smooth, practiced lines were anything but an act.
“We might still be able to save it,” he continued. “I convinced the investors not to make any hasty decisions. We just need to manage the spin on this.”
Of course, he’d put aspinon it. For all the posturing he’d done, his money was tied up in this, too.
“So what are you saying?”
“Your name is still attached to this thing,” Trevor said. “And your money. It has to go through. And for now, you’re a big part of making that happen.”
My head started to throb from the effort of the conversation. I pinched the bridge of my nose and exhaled slowly as Trevor continued.
“We’ll keep things amicable,” he said. “Publicly, we say we realized we weren’t compatible before making a mistake,” he said. “We can keep it clean, mutual, and responsible.”
How convenient, I thought, but didn’t bother saying out loud. The easiest way to be done with this conversation was not to provoke him any further than I already had.
Instead, I nodded.
“Good. So we’ll move forward with the project as planned then. Your next committee meeting is coming up. Make sure the committee decides to recommend that the project go through, and everything will be fine as long as we present a unified front. Remember, the investors like the wholecommunityangle.”
