“How are you holding up?” Riley asked, closing the bedroom door behind him. “I see you’ve decided to give up clothing, which I think is a solid choice for you.”
For the first time in his life, Brent was aware of Riley looking at him. Reallylookingat him, not just seeing him there.
He wasn’t sure what it meant, but it was strange. New.
“I, uh,” Brent started, brushing that thought aside. “I’m hungry,” he said, not able to think of anything else.
He was hungry. He was hungry, and tired, and sad. He wanted to curl up under the blankets and nibble on toast, and he wanted a hug.
Riley would give him one if he asked, but he wasn’t sure he could ask. Not right now.
“Good, because Emily and I made dinner. It’s delicious and you should definitely come down and eat. But, uh.” Riley cleared his throat. “You might want to sit down first. I got a text from Rose.”
Brent sat down without even consciously deciding to. His knees collapsed underneath him, dropping him back onto the bed.
It was just as well he’d still been standing in front of it, or he would have dropped straight to the floor.
Riley gave him a worried look, his eyes softening and his mouth falling, but took out his phone anyway.
“I’m not gonna read it to you exactly, but Rose wants you to know that she left with Tom this morning.” Riley looked up. “I assume she means Tom your business partner.”
Brent swallowed. He’d been surprised that he didn’t see Tom at the wedding, but he’d assumed he just missed him and that he was there somewhere among the crowd.
Apparently not.
Brent’s stomach churned, his head spinning. He could see why Riley had told him to sit down.
This wasworsethan realizing Rose wasn’t coming. He hadn’t been betrayed by one person he thought he could trust, he’d been betrayed bytwo.
Images of Rose and Tom together raced through his head, one after another. It should have been so obvious. He’d thought Tom was just being friendly, getting along with Rose like a normal person, but now…
Now it seemed sinister. Tom wasn’t normally the friendliest of men. Professional, and good at his job, but he and Brent had always been colleagues, business partners, but never reallyfriends. Not friends in the way Brent was with other people, people who he chose to see outside of business hours.
He felt stupid for not seeing it.
He felt stupid for thinking Rose would pick him over someone like Tom, who was always so polished and neat, who wasn’t carrying around the burden of his past, who…
Who was justbetterthan Brent. In every way that counted.
Being reminded of that hurt.
But the worst of it all was the guilt.
The guilt at being relieved, just a little. Everything had been moving too fast. Brent had told himself that it was just wedding jitters, that it’d all be okay once all the planning and the stress was over, but…
Maybe he had known, subconsciously, that it wasn’t right.
He was too exhausted to think too hard about it right now.
“I’ve changed my mind about being hungry,” Brent said.
He wanted to curl up under the blankets and never come out. The feeling of being crushed under a pile of his own mistakes was overwhelming, and all he wanted to do right now was sleep forever.
It wasn’t an option, and neither Riley nor Emily would have let him, but it was the only thought he could come up with.
This sucked. Everything sucked, and Brent couldn’t see a way out of it. There was so much to do, and it had taken him hours to summon the motivation to get undressed.
Overwhelming barely seemed to cover it. There had to be a bigger word than that.
