Forget buying Xander a beer, I was going to punch him for not binning this. I’d think about that later. Right now, I was more worried about the guilt on Ryan’s face. “Shadow?—”
“Don’t,” he said harshly. “Whatever you were going to say, I can’t hear it right now.”
Dropping the card on the table, he turned on his heel and stormed from the room.
I bit my lip as I eyed the innocuous white card. I shouldn’t read it. It was an invasion of Ryan’s privacy.
But fuck, I wanted to know exactly what she’d said to make him go so pale.
Sod it. Wasn’t like I hadn’t violated his privacy in a hundred small ways already. May as well go the whole hog.
Ryan
You have no idea how grateful I am to have met you. You give me the peace and security that I’ve dreamed of, but never truly had. I can’t wait to be your wife.
Here’s to more rainy mornings and blueberry muffins, baby.
Kate xx
I read the words twice more, but they didn’t change.
Nausea bubbled up my throat, threatening to spill all over Ryan’s carpet. I forced it back, fighting the urge to crumple up the card; the reminder of everything we’d both been trying to ignore.
Ryan was engaged to be married. To someone else. Someone who was excited to become his wife. Who had cute traditions with him.
Traditions I’d thought were ours.
Ry came back into the room, still pale. He spotted thecard in my hand and huffed. “Should’ve known you wouldn’t keep your nose out.”
I flicked the card back onto the table. It landed lightly, with none of the weight it had just dropped on our relationship. “She sent you blueberry muffins.”
He glanced at the basket. “Guess she did.”
“That’s a…thing, with the two of you?”
Ry folded his arms over his chest. “I didn’t think you wanted to talk about Kate.”
I didn’t. I really fucking didn’t, but I couldn’t let this go. “Just answer the question, Ryan.”
He flinched, and I realised it was the first time I’d called him by his full name in…well, years. “It’s how we met. Dashing into a coffee shop to avoid the rain. We both reached for the last blueberry muffin.”
I braced my hands behind my head. All of the fear, frustration, and anger I’d been suppressing was forcing its way to the surface. “I can’t fucking believe this.”
“That I have a relationship with Kate? A history?” Ryan demanded hotly. “How could I not, Dominic? I proposed to her. That should’ve given you a big fucking clue.”
“She sent you muffins!” The words ricocheted off the walls with the volume at which they came out. “Blueberry muffins.”
“So?”
“So that wasours. That was us.” I poked my chest hard, right over the heart that was breaking all over again. “And now you share it with her. Like I was nothing. Likewewere nothing.”
“They’re just muffins.”
I laughed in disbelief. “If you think that then maybe you were right about us not going back there. Maybe therehasn’t been anything here all this time. Maybe I’ve wasted the last ten years chasing a fucking fantasy.”
Ry sucked in a breath, rubbing his chest. “Is that really what you think? After everything we’ve just shared?”
“What else am I supposed to think, Shadow?” I threw my arms wide in frustration. “I have no fucking clue what’s going to happen. For all I know, you’re going to marry her and break my heart all over again.”