Page 78 of Bad Luck Club

“I was out of line,” he said the moment they stepped inside. “I shouldn’t have said that about your first marriage.”

“You didn’t mean it?” she asked, her blue eyes so cold they looked like chips of ice. “Or you shouldn’t have said it out loud? Because those are two very different things.”

He opened his mouth to answer, then stopped. He wanted to be truthful with her. And yeah, there was no doubt that marrying a guy on the day you met him was abnormal. But he could also see Blue at nineteen, let loose from the cage her father had imprisoned her in. She’d been rebelling, plain and simple, and he couldn’t fault her one bit, but she’d still faced consequences, hadn’t she? The issue was that he hadn’t expressed himself well—he’d acted like he stood in judgment of her, when he didn’t. He understood why she’d made the choices she had, and her tenacity, her ability to survive and overcome so many challenges, was one of the reasons he admired her so much.

He started to say so, but she spoke up first.

“I lived with a man who controlled my childhood. Then I married a man who wanted to control the rest of my life. And they both did so under the umbrella of normal, Lee.”

He started to speak again, but stopped, unsure of what to say.

The cords of her neck tightened, and she stared up at him with determination and anger in her eyes. “I willneverlet anyone dictate what is normal to me again.”

Lee’s heart shattered. It was time to use some radical honesty with himself. Even though he knew he was falling for her, hard, he wasn’t the man she needed. Remy and her father had stripped her heart raw, and Lee was too much of a prick to give her what she deserved.

“You’re right,” he forced out past the lump in his throat. “You shouldneverlet anyone rule over youeveragain.”

Some of her tension drained away.

“I was wrong, Blue, and you were right.” He gave her a sad smile. “I can probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve said that.”

She gave him a hesitant smile.

“You should be with a man who can see you—all of you—and love you exactly the way you are. You deserve a good man, Blue, and that man isn’t me.” It was someone like Dr. Wonderful.

Shock filled her eyes.

“I’ll still help you with your business, and I want to take you to see the shop owner in Greenville. If you agree, I’d like to sit in on the meeting as your business consultant and make sure whatever arrangement you come up with is the best for your business long term, but I won’t come back to the Bad Luck Club. You need them, and I’m far too judgmental.”

“Lee…”

“I’m so sorry I overstepped my bounds and put you in a difficult position,” he said, feeling like something inside him was about to burst. He didn’t want that to happen in front of her. “I won’t do it again. I promise to be a gentleman from this moment on.”

Then he turned and walked out of the room before he could do something incredibly selfish, like change his mind.

Chapter Twenty-Two

The rest of the meeting passed in a blur. Lee had apparently come by to tell everyone that he needed to leave to deal with a brewery emergency, and no one had questioned him despite the fact that the rest of the staff seemed completely untroubled.

Bear had said they couldn’t do traditional meeting stuff, given they were in public. Everyone would discuss their challenges virtually, via a group text. Blue found herself thinking that Lee would have scoffed at that. Both the group text, which would make him shudder, and the fact that they’d opt for privacy now after making a spectacle of themselves earlier, matching sweatshirts and all. And maybe there was a small grain of truth in that—because people were complicated, and it was possible to be both right and wrong.

Was he wrong about the two of them?

She’d tried not to think about Lee like that…and then he’d shown up at the arboretum exactly when she needed him. It had felt like fate. Like the universe was showing her thathewas the man she needed, that the handsome, accomplished doctor she’d met the previous night was no more right for her than anyone else she’d dated. And in that moment, she’d submitted to it. She’d fallen into his starlight eyes and the way he made her feel—the wonder and magic of it—and let her protests and fears dry up. Because he wasn’t like Remy. He may have been pushed into the cold, businessman mold by his father, but he’d never fit. His big heart had spilled right out. And because Harry was right too. No one would stay in the club forever. Each of them would leave, and then it would no longer be the same place that had offered her a safe haven when she needed it.

And that would be okay if she still had them. If she still had her friends.

In the car earlier, glancing at Lee’s profile, taking in the way that graphic T-shirt clung to him beneath the jacket, she’d wanted to tell him to forget about the meeting. To drive them to her house so they could explore what they’d started the night they’d sat back-to-back. Something had stirred in her that night, it had awoken, and it hadn’t slumbered since.

The other men she’d dated had made her less herself, but the time she’d spent with Lee…she felt more herself than ever. She’d allowed herself to get angry. To talk back. To ask for help. To do all the things that she had refused to do in Bear’s first challenges.

Although she hadn’t told Lee, she’d finally written that letter to her father—seven whole pages of it—after learning the truth of what his father had done to him.

He had helped her more than he knew. But then he’d said those hurtful words that had reminded her so much of her father.

It had taken her two weeks to tell her father about her first marriage, because she’d known exactly what he’d say. He hadn’t surprised her.

“I knew it,” he’d said. “I knew this was coming.”

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