Page 133 of Family Bonds- Garrett & Justine

“Maybe I should have,” he said. “If there isn’t anything else, sorry you came all this way. Maybe you should have reached out first and I could have saved you the trouble.”

“I guess I should have,” Taylor said. His ex looked at Justine. “Good luck with him. He’s never what he seems and just drags you along until he’s ready to decide for himself. Just like now. He’s never talked like this before.”

Taylor turned and walked out of his house and he looked at Justine.

“An ex?” she asked.

“Yep,” he said, marching back to the kitchen to wash his hands and get the remaining dough off that he wasn’t able to roughly yank with the towel he’d had in his hand.

“Want to explain that to me?” she asked.

“It’s not like I’ve got a choice,” he said.

“We all have a choice,” she said. “I asked if you wanted to talk about it. I’m not going to take someone’s word about you as a person, least of all an ex, without hearing your side of it. I feel I know you fairly well at this point, but I have to admit it was confusing on some levels and then others not so much what she’d said.”

Not what he wanted to hear. “What level isn’t confusing?”

“Well, first the part about you making decisions. That’s confusing. I don’t think that is the case or I hope not. We’ve had this talk before about secrets and working things out as a team so I’m going to hope you didn’t withhold this after we’ve already been around the block on your neighbor and cancer diagnosis.”

Shit.

She was right.

He should have brought this up.

He’d had more than one opportunity to do it and made the conscious decision to not.

Which meant she’d look at it as hiding.

“What else?” he asked. “That’s confusing?”

“Your tone of voice with her. She’s right. It’s not a side I’ve seen with you either. You have a ton of patience with everyone and didn’t just now. So I can agree with what she said, but the question is why? It makes me want to jump to guilt and I’m trying my hardest not to do that.”

“I appreciate that,” he said. “I can tell right now we are going to get into a fight because anything I say is going to come off wrong. I don’t want that to happen.”

She narrowed her eyes. “If you know it will cause me to be upset, then that is why you haven’t brought her up before? So you have kept her a secret? Or is this the ex that didn’t like your job? I get that, but you never said more.”

“I don’t know about all of your exes,” he said. “I don’t question you on it.”

“Nope,” she said. “You don’t, but if you asked I’d tell you.”

“You haven’t asked,” he said.

It was like the top of the tea kettle went off. “You’re kidding me, right? I need to do that? If anything in my life was going on that involved an ex and it felt like the timing was there to voluntarily say something, I’d do it. I think that is the problem. I’m willing to bet what you’re going to tell me is that you had ample time to bring up Taylor and you didn’t for a reason. Am I right? That’s why you think we are going to fight? It was more than just she didn’t like your job?”

There was no getting around this.

Justine’s face was red and she was getting worked up but trying to hold it in.

He was going to have to tackle this head-on and take his lumps.

“Yes,” he said. “I want to argue I’m a wuss, but that isn’t the case here. This was personal. Taylor hurt me and I don’t like to relive it. The fact she just came knocking at my door acting like this was what she wanted and I didn’t give it to her is a load of crap. She’s the one that couldn’t give me what I needed andshewalked becauseshecouldn’t handle it.”

“When?” Justine asked. “I want to say recently, but not since we’ve been dating. I’d know otherwise and you’re not a cheater.”

“Fuck no,” he said strongly.

“And there is that tone again that you never use.”

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