Page 168 of Slapshot Bride

“So the answer’s yes?” I ask, almost too enthusiastically. “You’ll—”

“I never told her to leave.”

I stop.

“What?”

“You really thought I got to her?” His brow knits together. “That I called her and told her it was for the best?”

He stares at me. “Easton, I never called her. I never spoke to her about you after that dinner. I wouldn't have.”

A beat passes. “I assumed she left on her own.”

Suddenly, my heart rate picks up.

It wasn’t Mason? She left… on her own?

“Then why did she go?”

If Mason didn’t, then…

“Preston,” I say. But I’m already arguing with myself before it’s out. “No. That doesn’t make sense. Her father blew the engagement a week later, in public. She’s not with him. She’s not with anybody. She just…”

Left.

She just left me.

“She told you it was fake,” I say slowly. “At the restaurant. She looked right at you and said it was fake, and I didn’t correct her, because I thought—” My jaw works. “I thought she was protecting me. I’ve been telling myself for two weeks that she said it to protect me.”

Mason doesn’t answer.

“But maybe it was just true,” I say. “For her. Maybe I’m the only one who forgot it was supposed to be a lie.”

But she promised to stay. To never leave.

I can still hear her voice from that hotel room in Chicago. She promised. Said the words. She told me she’d see me at home.

I stand up, walk to his window, and look at the street. My sight blurs out, and all I can see is back in the hotel room in Chicago. The morning I last saw her.

“I have to ask her,” I say, turning around. “I have to ask her, Mason. I can’t live in this. I need to hear her say it.”

“No.”

“What?”

He’s on his feet now.

“Not now,” he says sternly. “And I need you to actually hear me, because I’m not saying it as her brother. She’s just freshly out of a toxic relationship. She’s just claimed her freedom. Whatever you had going on, it was because of proximity. Give her time to settle into her life again.”

I don’t say anything, because he’s right and I hate that he’s right.

He steps closer.

“I’m not standing in the way forever,” he says, gentler now. “If this is real, and I’m starting to think it might be, it’ll still be real in a few months, when she’s had a minute to find out who she is and what she wants in life. I’ll buy the first round. I mean that.” He puts a hand on my shoulder. “But not today.”

I look at my oldest friend.

Every instinct I have is telling me to argue.