The Wright Brother(69)

Avoiding her had seemed like the best option. I’d thought that telling her what I had seen would send her careening away from me. Yet, here she was, gazing up at me, as if she couldn’t decide whether she wanted to kiss me or punch me. What a quandary, this woman.

“You’re an idiot,” she snapped.

“Not now,” I muttered.

“Yes! Right now. I’ve waited all week for this. Why wait another minute?”

I could see in her eyes that she was in no way going to let this go. “Fine. Let’s do this somewhere else.”

“Fine,” she spat. “Outside then.”

I made my excuses to my family and then followed Emery outside. Emery nodded her head to the left, and we started walking in the bitter cold weather. She was in a warm jacket and scarf, and already, her cheeks and nose were pink from the cold. Temperatures were dropping rapidly, and we were actually expecting a white Christmas.

“All right, we’re outside,” I said. “What is it that you have to say to me?”

“You’re being such an incredible idiot right now.”

“You mentioned that.”

She glared in my direction. “I can’t do this, Jensen.”

“Can’t do what?” I asked, knowing full well what she meant.

“You don’t trust me. You don’t value my opinion. You couldn’t even bother to talk to me. You ran at the first sign of trouble. Then, when things got tough, you went to see your ex-wife.”

“This has nothing to do with Vanessa. You know that.”

“How?” she demanded. “How could I know that? Do I know anything at all about what the hell this is about? You’re pissed about Landon. Then, you ran to your ex, and you expect me to not care about that? Look at how you reacted when you thought something had happened with Landon. I have every right to be upset.”

“You do,” I conceded.

None of what she was saying was wrong. But that didn’t mean I was going to stand here and let her yell at me. I knew Landon. I knew what he was feeling and thinking. She must just be blind to it.

“But it doesn’t change what I saw or how you feel about Landon or how Landon feels about you.”

“Oh my God, give it a rest! I do not love Landon, and Landon does not love me,” she hissed.

“I know what I saw.”

“No, you don’t. You really don’t. You have never given me a chance to explain what you think you saw. I can’t sit around and let you walk all over my heart, Jensen. I put myself out there after I’d been hurt. And then, at the first sign of trouble, you ditched me. And all of it could have been fixed with one little conversation that you refused to have with me.”

“If you think that one conversation will magically change everything, then tell me what I saw. Tell me what really happened.”

“Look, the night you saw me with Landon was in no way romantic. He came to apologize to me for being a dick when he found us together. Then, Heidi and I got drunk, and he offered both of us a ride home. I was too drunk to walk to the front door, so he helped me. I got inside and immediately called you. The end. That’s the whole story.”

“And you were all over him because…”

“One, I was not all over him. Two, I was drunk, and I’m not a good drunk. I’m a face-plant-into-the-concrete-and-bust-my-nose-and-get-two-black-eyes kind of drunk. Trust me, I’ve been there.”

I snorted, just imagining her falling over like that.

“That’s really all that happened?” I asked.

I suddenly felt panicked, like maybe Landon hadn’t been the one who overreacted…that I had been the one to overreact. If what she was saying was true, then I had hurt her this week for no good reason.

“Yes!” she cried, exasperated. “And you would know that if you had bothered to pick up the phone. Go ask Landon. Go ask Heidi! She was in the car that night. If anything, I think that Heidi might be into Landon. Not me! I don’t understand what I did to make you not trust me, but I hate this.”

“Emery,” I said slowly. I was an idiot.

“Save it,” she said in frustration, throwing my words back at me.

“You’re right,” I said automatically.

She gave me a wary look. “I am?”

“Yes. I am an idiot.”

“Well, that’s very obvious at this point.”

“What I’m trying to say is, I was so afraid of losing you that I pushed you away. I made assumptions. It didn’t help that Landon had said that, if I didn’t know what had really happened in your breakup, then I didn’t know you at all.”

Her eyes ignited in fury. “He said what?” she cried. “Oh, I’m going to kill him, I swear.”