“Y’know how Theo’s dad was a miserable misogynistic, homophobic piece of shit?” Corey asked, as casually as he would have about a fond shared memory.
He hadn’t been at the funeral. Hehadbeen dating Theo at the time, so I’d thought that was a little weird. I’d been too glad he wasn’t there and I was the one wrapping my arm around Theo at the graveside to think too much about it.
“I do,” I agreed. “He once told me… well, he once said some things about Theo to me that I’m not going to repeat but I kind of wish I’d slapped him for.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Corey said. “But he would’ve put you on the floor before you connected. Better that you didn’t.”
I huffed, but Corey was right. I’d never actually hit anyone in my life.
He… seemed to know alotmore about me than I’d expected.
“Anyway,” Corey said. “Because he was a miserable, misogynistic, homophobic piece of shit, Delilah can’t get her hands on her trust fund.”
“Until she’s thirty, right.”
“No,” Corey corrected. He paused, straightened, then lunged around the corner of the hay bales and fired three, four, five shots in quick succession.
A woman’s voice called out, “Fuck you, asshole.”
“Too late, I’m getting married tomorrow,” Corey called back, sitting back down beside me.
This was in the running for weirdest conversation I’d ever had. Top five for sure.
“No,” he repeated. “She can’t get hers ‘til she’s married.”
A moment of perfect understanding dawned over me as the puzzle pieces all fell neatly into place.
“So, the whole Hargrave family except maybe Theo himself thought I was only dating him for his money—which wasn’t true,by the way—and Delilah got in touch with me and said, basically, that she was up for an arrangement if I was. We get married, she pays me off, we go our separate ways, she goes to college, I do whatever I’d do with more money than a sane person could spend in a lifetime. I agreed.”
This sounded more like the Corey I knew. If Delilah was in on it, though, good for her. Her father had been the worst of all of them, hands down.
“Problem is,” Corey continued with a wry laugh. “I love her.”
He meant that. The way he said it was too raw, toorealto be faked. He did love Delilah.
“I love her,” he repeated. “I’m terrified she doesn’t love me.”
Something pulsed painfully under my ribs. I knewexactlyhow he felt.
I knew Theo loved me in the sense that he was my best friend. I didn’t doubt his affection, I didn’t doubt he wanted to be around me.
I also knew he’d never want me the way I wanted him.
Much as I didn’t particularly want to empathize with the man who’d broken Theo’s heart, here I was. Feeling his pain.
“She likes that you take her seriously,” I offered. Delilah hadn’t said anything about being in love with him, but she did definitelylikehim. Admire and look up to him, even.
It wasn’t necessarily love, but it was a start. It could’ve been love, one day, maybe.
“And she said she was only getting married once,” I added as I thought back over the conversation. “And that the two of you are moving to a ranch when she’s done with college, so…”
Maybe shedidlove him. Or wanted to.
Corey’s brows rose, his eyes widening and the shy, tentative beginnings of a smile unlike any I’d seen on his face before turned up one corner of his lips. “I’ll?—”
The blaring of what I was fairly sure had once been a literal air raid siren cut him off.
The final round of the game—thank whatever higher power was apparently looking out for me—was over.
