I shook my head, dropping it to my chest.
“Go cool off, Pres,” Reid said, softer now. “And whatever it is, figure it out. I might not agree with the way he tried to say it, but I think Brody has a point. You’ve spent most of your life twisted up by Jess Anderson. Whatever happened recently just lit the fuse.” He held up his hands to ward off my totally bullshit protest that nothing was going on. “You need to sort it. Because this isn’t you.”
I opened my mouth to say more but closed it again, because there was nothing more to say. He was right.
Instead, I nodded, whistled to the dog, and walked away.
Jess
The Timberstone office was the last place I wanted to be. Especially on the heels of the vote and the look on Preston’s face that I still couldn’t get out of my head.
But whether I liked it or not, I had a job to do. And if the council accepted the committee’s recommendation, that job was only going to become more important in the coming weeks.
Still, I’d sat at my desk for hours without actually getting any real work done. I’d managed to email Trevor to let him know the committee’s decision and give him the heads-up that we’d be recommending revisions to the original proposal, so he could get to work implementing those changes.
I was confident that if we all worked together, the revised plan would be something everyone was happy with.
Well, almost everyone.
I no longer thought that there was anything that would make Preston happy. And I couldn’t help but wonder how much of it had to do with the development anymore.
It was my fault. I never should have gone to him.
It hadn’t been fair.
Not to either of us.
And deep down, I’d known that the moment I’d stayed.
But at the time, I hadn’t been thinking clearly, and he’d been a friend. Someone to…no.
Preston was more than a friend. He always had been. Even when we were kids, and I’d rejected him because I was too scared to know what it meant when he’d given me the flowers. And then, over time, he’d become anenemy. Because maybe on some level, it had been easier to put him in that box than to allow myself to think of him honestly.
And now…I dropped my head to my hands…I’d made such a mess of things.
I’d let myself believe that our rekindled friendship was just that—a friendship.
When it could never be that simple between us.
Especially now.
I shut my laptop and pushed up from my desk. There was no point staying there if I couldn’t focus on anything anyway. I needed to clear my head.
I locked the door behind me and tucked the key into my purse when I heard his voice.
“Couldn’t wait to start making those sales, huh?”
“Pardon?” I turned, frowning at the sharp tone of his voice. “It’s my job, Preston. I was just?—”
“Doing your job.” He cut me off. His features were twisted in anger as he stood in front of me, his arms crossed like animpenetrable wall. “Right. That’s what this has always been about, hasn’t it? Money.” He scoffed, and something inside me snapped.
“You really think that?” I reached for him as he tried to turn his back on me. He froze under my touch, so I yanked him backward until he faced me again, before releasing him. “You really think that’s all this has been about?” Before he could answer, I kept talking. “If you truly believe that I could have gone through all of this…the meetings, the hikes, the…uswithout it meaning anything, then you don’t know me at all, Preston Lyons.”
“Obviously, I don’t, Jess,” he said. “Because the woman I thought I knew wouldn’t have sold out to an asshole who?—”
“This isn’t about him!” I yelled, fed up.
“How can it not be, Jess? You were about to marry him. Even when you knew that he didn’t love you and you didn’t love him.” Preston’s voice had increased an octave, too.
