Page 94 of Settling the Score

A muscle ticked in his lower jaw. ‘You’re pissed.’

‘I’m not “pissed”. I amfurious. Livid.So angry I can hardly see straight.’ She leaned close to him and jabbed a finger to his chest. ‘How fucking dare you do this to me?’

His skin paled. ‘Dowhatto you?’

‘Take your pick! Think you can tell me you love me and that the past just magically goes away? Or do it on the day of my best friend’s wedding? Or tell her before me so I’m left being goddamn ambushed?’

‘That’s not what I meant to happen.’

‘Yeah, well, it did.’

‘Okay, but listen,’ he said, urgently, reaching out and putting his hands on her hips. ‘I am in love with you. I have no answers about how this will work, where we’ll live, what will happen next. All I know is I want you in my life. I can’t lose you again.’

The last sentence was hollow, so desperate, it almost,almostgot through to her. He sounded so genuine.

And maybe he was. Maybe on some level he’d really come to think he loved her, that they could make a go of this. Maybe he’d just got so caught up in all the excitement of Blake’s wedding that he was fantasising about this kind of future for himself. Whatever. Sienna wasn’t buying it.

‘You don’t love me.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘An apology I might have accepted ten years ago, but I don’t want to even hear it right now,’ she muttered.

‘I mean?—’

‘I know what you mean. I’m not interested. You. Don’t. Love. Me.’

‘Don’t you think I know how I feel?’

‘Nope.’

‘You sound pretty sure of that.’

‘Because I value facts over fantasy. Because I think actions speak louder than words.’

He stared at her, expression impossible to interpret.

‘A decade ago, you did something to me that no one, and I meanno one,who was in love could ever, ever do.’

He blanched visibly. ‘That’s not true.’

‘You dropped me like a hot potato.’ Her voice cracked as she forced herself to admit the harsh truth to him. ‘You dropped me like I was worthless.’

He shook his head. ‘It’s the exact opposite of how I felt.’

‘It’s easy to say that now.’

‘Nothing about this is easy.’

‘You think?’

They stared at each other, two people on opposite sides of the same divide.

‘The thing is, I get why you did it. I get what you were afraid of. I get why you left town. I get all of that. I’m just saying, that’s not the action of a man in love, and even though I understand it better now, it’s definitely not the kind of thing I can forgive.’

His jaw dropped. ‘I genuinely thought it was right for you, to end it like that. To make it a clean break.’

She wanted to push him. She wanted to push him so hard he fell backwards on his big, beautiful butt. She wanted to shove him because he was breaking her heart all over again now.