And yet, it felt like so much more.
“Until midnight?”
“One,” I corrected her.
“That explains the dark circles under your eyes.”
“I got a solid seven hours.”
If Megan could have crossed her arms in this dress, she would have. Her expression said it all. “Don’t make me be late to my own wedding, Laney Fisher. I will make Kevin sweat through his tux if that’s what it takes to get the truth.”
“You are the worst, you know that?”
She blew a few strands of hair out of her face. “I own it. Spill.”
“There’s nothing to spill. We went to the beach and walked around. I told him what happened with Derek, and?—”
“You told him about Derek? Like,allof it?”
I sighed. I knew what she meant. “Not—no, not about that. I don’t ever want to talk about that again.”
When I’d first told Megan about everything Derek had done when we were together, she had threatened to leave Kevin if he stayed friends with him. I was the one who told her not to rock the boat.
“I did tell him about most of it, though. How he acted when we were dating. A lot of the stuff leading up to when Mom got sick. And then, of course, when he cheated.”
Megan was quiet for a moment. “Wow. That’s not like you.”
She was right. It wasn’t. She’d been telling me for over a year now that I needed to see a therapist if only to deal with everything that had happened. I had just laughed. With what money?
It was easier to keep things bottled up, to read Greek tragedies when Ireallyfelt terrible, and remind myself that however sad things were, they could definitely be worse. After all, a king could have forbidden me to bury my kin and then walled me in a tomb to die when I disobeyed his orders. Sometimes things were bad, but they weren’tAntigone-bad.
“How did he react?”
I fingered the intricate braid that had been painstakingly arranged over my left shoulder. “Surprisingly sweet. Or at least sympathetic. And loyal. He basically thought Derek was a piece of shit, and that’s when he offered to be my date to the wedding so he could guard me from him.”
Itwassweet, in a Ronan sort of way.
Megan was watching me, rubbing her gloss-covered lips together meditatively. “You know, I think he might love you.”
I had to roll my eyes. “You’re in the love zone, lady. You think everyone’s in love right now, but that’s just you and Kev. Ronan and I barely know each other.”
“And yet, he just showed up here looking for you out of nowhere and declared himself your husband in a room full of people.”
“He came to ensure we are getting an annulment. And that was just a joke. He… likes jokes.”
I didn’t know why the last admission cast a pit in my stomach. I liked jokes too. Or at least, I seemed to like Ronan’s. Between Vegas and last night, the man had made me laugh harder than I had in years.
Maybe it was the idea thatIwas a joke to him that bothered me so much.
Or maybe I didn’t know exactly where the point was where his jokes faded away and seriousness took over.
There was a knock, and the door opened. Darla popped in, one hand on her headset.
“Ladies? Bridal party is walking. We’re ready for you.”
“We’ll follow you down,” I told her.
Darla frowned, clearly unhappy that we weren’t immediately coming, but left us alone.