Page 28 of A Different Husband

The first thing I saw - the only thing - was my wife staring out the window like the answers to all her problems were just out of reach. When she finally turned toward me, I couldn’t hold myself back. I crossed the room and pulled her into my arms. “I’m sorry. I should have never shared our personal business with him,” I admitted.

“And you call me Nemesis,” She whispered into my chest. If she could make a joke, then we would be okay. We just needed to get on the same page with everything first.

Chapter 17

COURTNEY

“Would you please come home,so we can talk things out?”

My eyes lifted to see Hadley across the room. She gave me a slight nod of her head before she walked off to her bedroom to give us some privacy. “What you did was not okay.”

“I know.”

“I won’t allow another Robeson man to walk all over me.”

“I know.”

I shook my head as a queasy feeling in my stomach made me reevaluate my last statement. “I’m sorry, that wasn’t a fair thing to say to you.”

“No,” Flynn said as he gently moved me back so that he held me at arm’s length. “You’re entitled to feel however you want, Court. It’s been a whirlwind to say the least. One minute you were engaged to my cousin and the next you were married to me. You didn’t even get a decent amount of time to grieve the loss of one relationship before you were thrown in the next one. When we started this together, it was an arrangement. We blurred those lines from the beginning, but I think maybe that’s part of our problem.”

“You regret the things we’ve shared?” I asked him as that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach grew into a giant void that threatened to swallow me up at any moment. Flynn sighed and shook his head vehemently.

“No, not at all. My only regret is not giving you time to adjust first. I want you, sweetheart. There’s no doubt about that, but I want you the right way. I don’t want you to be confused or to resent me in the end for trampling all over you and pushing too hard for something you’re not ready for.”

“I’m pretty sure it was me who pushed for our wedding night,” I teased to try to alleviate the thick tension that threatened to form a wall between us. Flynn’s face remained serious as he pulled me in for another hug.

“Do you want to stay here for the night with Hadley, or…” He let the sentence dangle there with the hint of an invitation to come back home with him. It was still weird for me to think of his place ashome.I lived there, but everything was his from before I was in the picture. Maybe Flynn was right and we had both jumped in feet first without really taking the time we needed to sort ourselves, let alone what we were to each other.

“I want to come back. Hadley should get to enjoy what’s left of her long weekend without having to mop up my tears or babysit my crazy emotions.”

“I don’t mind,” My best friend called out, letting me know that we truly had no privacy in her tiny apartment.

“I’ll meet you back at the house.”

“You don’t want to ride with me?” Flynn seemed almost hurt by me wanting to get there on my own.

“I would, if it weren’t for the fact that my car is parked downstairs too, and I don’t really want to have to worry about coming back for it later.”

“Yeah, sorry, I forgot.” Flynn backed up and then took another step backward toward the door. “I’ll see you at home?”

“I’m right behind you, I promise.” He offered a small smile and then left me there in my best friend’s apartment. Once he was gone, Hadley came back out of her bedroom.

“Well?”

“I don’t know,” I shrugged.

“He apologized, right?”

“Yeah, but where do we go from here? He’s right. We jumped right into this. I jumped right into this,” I corrected. “I was running from what Beckett did and buried all my anger and sadness. The wedding, our night together, the days after…” I sighed. “It was all a distraction.”

“Except you’re missing the most important part of the equation,” My friend informed me.

“What’s that?”

“You were happy being distracted by Flynn and you weren’t all that sad about losing Beckett.”

The first thingI noticed when I got back to Flynn’s house was that a couple of my smaller paintings were sitting propped against the wall. “What are they doing here?” I asked.

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