Page 7 of Attached At Heart
“Yes, but that’sallyou told me. Just…Boston. We left things weird, Blake.” She flicked her gaze to mine—all accusatory—before adding with a mumble, “Or rather,youleft things weird.”
I shifted slightly in my chair before clearing my throat. “I don’t know what you mean by that.”
“Yes, you do.”
Okay, fine. I did.
Delaney’s expression dripped with exasperation. “Youclearlydidn’t support my engagement to Austin?—”
“You’d only been dating him for like a month, Delaney,” I interjected dryly. I mean, come on. What friend wouldn’t point out that it was moving a little too fast? Especially when she’d spent years telling me she didn’t evenwantto get married one day.
“Okay, yeah,” she conceded. “But also…no, because we never actually dated at all.”
“It certainly didn’t seem like it,” I agreed. “You went to, what, like one football game with him? Dinner twice?”
I ran into her at one of Noah’s football games in Minneapolis, and finding out she’d been there with him had put a damper on the whole goddamn day.
But she shook her head. “No, Blake.” She took a deep breath before releasing it slowly. “That’s not what I meant.”
I frowned, feeling a knot form in my gut. “What do you mean?”
“I mean…” Her eyes shifted away from mine. “We never dated. We were never engaged. It wasn’treal.”
“You keep saying that, Lane, but I don’t know what that means. Did he do something? Because if he did, I swear to God?—”
“He fell in love with someone else,” she blurted, and I reared back, assaulted by the thought.
“Hewhat?”
My brows drew together as I raked a hand through my hair, needing to do something to keep from running out of the restaurant to find Austin Long and demand to know what the hell waswrongwith him. Fell in love with someone else? Fell out of love withDelaney? When hehadher?
How could he so easily do the one thing I’d tried all my goddamn life to do? The one thing I’d failed at so miserably.
“He fell in love with someone else,” Delaney repeated calmly. Why was she so calm? “Which isfine, Blake.”
I blinked at her in disbelief. “It’s fine that your fiancé fell in love with someone else? What are you talking about? That’s absolutely not fine. It’s theoppositeof fine, Lane. It’s—it’s impossible.”
Literally impossible. And if she wasn’t going to be angry about it, I would be. Because what thefuck?
She sighed. “It’s fine because it was…” She dropped her head back, and my breathing suspended while she figured out how to end that sentence.
“Because it was what?” I probed, anxious.
Delaney looked up again, startled to find that I had leaned in, moving closer. A sort of shiver worked through her before she threw her hands up and confessed, “Fake. It was fake.”
“Fake?” I repeated, sounding hollow.
“Yes,” she confirmed. “Falsified. Fictional. Like I said…not real. That’s what I was trying to tell you.”
I mouthed the word one more time silently, attempting to understand it.
“My inheritance…” Delaney hedged, and the puzzle pieces slowly started to fall into place, causing my heart to pound. “I actually have to be married for a year to get it. Because in the dictionary, next toold-school, you’d see a picture of my grandparents.”
I shook my head, trying to keep up.
“So you have to turn thirty-five andthenget married for a year?”
“No, I, um…” She scratched her head and winced. “I made the birthday thing up. It was only ever the marriage thing. By the time I told you about it, I just knew both would coincide, timing-wise. Austin was simply a means to an end.”
