Her words stabbed him straight through the gut. “No. She didn’t.”
“Then why aren’t you with her?” Walker asked.
“Because. She wanted more. She wanted more, and I’m not going to give her more. I don’t want to get married. I don’t want to have kids. I already raised kids.” He looked at his siblings, pointed.
“Yikes, right in front of my abandonment issues,” Lila said.
“Wow. Way to fling your emotional issues on us,” Walker said.
“I’m not trying to. I’m just explaining. And she knew that from the beginning.”
Except his words felt false and hollow now. They felt like they were wrong.
He felt like he was wrong.
Like it was a lie.
“When did he check in?”
“Two days ago,” said Lila. “I don’t really look at the guest registry all the time, but I was curious how full the hotel was, and I was scrolling through the bookings, and I just noticed.”
His eyes narrowed. “And you thought you would tell me.”
“I did. Because you’re miserable. And I assumed it had something to do with her. I also figured that you had done something bonehead to mess it up.”
“Why would you thinkthat?”
“Because, as long as I’ve known you, you have never had a girlfriend. Marlowe is the first one.”
“She wasn’t my girlfriend.” He sounded petulant saying it, but girlfriend sounded stupid. It sounded youthful and light. Like somebody that you went to the movies with, or the fair and got cotton candy, and they had never done that. Ever.
Suddenly, he hated that they hadn’t done that. They had sex, and he kept her inside, and he hadn’t showered her with any of the light and wonderful things that she ought to have had.
She was funny. And fun. She teased him, she gave him all these things he had never had before, and he had been… rigid and determined to keep things strictly in that lane he’d decided to put them back in the beginning.
No wonder she was going back to her husband.
But that guy, that guy deserved a really intense talking to. He deserved a punch in the face. Because what he did to Marlowe…
“I’m going to go over there,” he said.
“What the hell,” Lila exclaimed as Cody stood up.
“I just want to talk.”
“Cody… If you have a fist fight in the lobby of our nice hotel, and you get blood on the floor, and you make a viral video and…”
“I’m just going to talk,” he said, holding his hands up in a surrender pose.
Of course, he could easily make them into fists.
He didn’t listen to anything else that his brother or sister said as he walked out the door and headed to his truck. Who knew where that motherfucker was, but he was probably dining in the Painted Ridge dining room, because that would be where he’d be at this hour. Probably hanging out with Cara, maybe, if not Marlowe.
His hands were tight on the steering wheel, and he realized that he actually was jonesing for a fight. Which wasn’t the best.
He pulled up to the parking lot, which was full, guests and restaurant traffic, he assumed. And then he walked inside, not thinking at all.
Marlowe wasn’t behind the desk, but he walked into the lobby, and there she was, standing on the periphery of the restaurant. And he spotted a man walking out of the restaurant, who met Marlowe’s gaze, and he was sure that was him.
