Page 194 of Charming Deception

She knows it’s there, unspoken between us, a shadow that can never be washed away with light.

I’ll just have to find so many ways to make her love me, she’ll forget about it.

Yeah, that will work.

She pulls away, taking a deep, shuddering breath. She blinks at me, her eyes glassy. Arousal and alcohol.

Maybe she is drunk.

“I know I’m not really what you want, Jameson.”

“What?” I cling to her dress as she clings to my shirt.

“I know I’m not enough for you. I know you won’t change your stance on marriage for me. I’m not in your vision of your future. If I were… you’d tell me everything. You’d open up.”

“What are you talking about? I was never what you wanted. I was just a distraction along the way.”

She shakes her head. “What?”

I dig my hands into her hair, holding her face close to mine. “What you wanted was to start your life over. Your life. And you wanted to be able to count on your brother for once, even though you didn’t want to admit it?—”

“That’s not?—”

“It’s true. And you got that. Along with some help from me. But the rest of it… I didn’t offer you a new life. I offered you a distraction from the life you wanted.”

She draws back a bit, absorbing that, as her words from the night I proposed to her ring in my head.

You’re a terrible distraction, Jameson Vance.

“Well, tell me,” she says. “What is the life I really wanted?”

“You tell me.”

I blow out a breath and let her go, dragging a hand through my hair. I need to stop drinking. My gaze sweeps across the empty bottles; they have no answers inside.

“The thing is,” I tell her, “maybe I’ve distracted you so thoroughly that you’ve forgotten.”

Chapter 43

Jameson

We walk the few blocks back to her mom’s house in silence. My head thuds with the slow beat of “I Want You.” And everything I said to Megan in the bar seems distant, obscured through a descending fog, adrift on a body of water just beyond my peripheral vision.

“I just want you to be happy.”

My words, out of nowhere, seem small and unimportant in the muggy night air. Mosquitos prick at me, and I’m constantly brushing them away, smacking my arms and neck. They don’t seem to bother Megan.

I read somewhere that they’re more attracted to some people’s blood than others.

Just more scientific evidence that Megan Hudson is a perfect specimen.

I stare at her long and hard, aching for some response.

Finally, she speaks. “You talk to me like you know me better than I know myself. Like you know what’s best for me and I don’t.”

“I don’t know what’s best for you. But I know you. You won’t be happy if you keep sacrificing what you want for a man. Any man. You’ve sacrificed for years. I know how much you gave up.” I wave a hand vaguely at the crappy little town she spent her life in—for a man who did shit-all for her.

He didn’t love her.

---