Page 15 of Tangled With the Wrong Guy
‘No, it’s a perfectly nice town. It’s just … Ihateit now.’ The thought of going back made her blood run cold, which was sad. To be fair, it was only her last few weeks there that had been horrific. Her childhood had been … okay.
‘Is Huddersfield where you left your sense of humour?’
She stopped, and yanked on the chain.
He flinched. ‘Hey – that hurt.’
Good.
‘Look, Joel. Will you just shut up about my sense of humour? It’s getting boring. And for the record,noneof what happened back there with your moronic mates was remotely funny.’
‘Welcome back, angry girl,’ he muttered.
Chapter Five
‘Too right I’m angry,’ snapped Chloe. She felt it building again, and didn’t attempt to stop it. ‘I was properly fucked over by a guyjustlike you. It’s like you came out of the same mould. He broke my heart. But at least it made me see the light. I could’ve been stuck in suburban hell with a cheating arsehole. Like your poor wife will be.’
‘Ouch. What makes you think I’d cheat?’ he said, meeting her eye.
‘Duh,’ she said. ‘You’re a not-very-ugly bloke. And you’re all slaves to your dicks.’ She raised her eyebrows.
He shook his head, and his eyes slid away.
Now that they’d stopped walking, she became aware of the stillness of the cemetery, the depth of the silence. It was as if the dead were listening in.
‘Believe what you like,’ he said, after a pause. ‘Look – can we call a truce? We’re stuck with each other; we might as well be civil. Let’s walk and talk, like they do in those US TV programmes.’
‘And what if I don’t want to talk?’
‘It’s going to be a very long night if we don’t.’
They began walking again. ‘So – was it thecheating arseholethat made you so angry, Chloe? Was it him that made you hate all us blokes?’
Chloe deflected the memories conjured by his words and pondered instead on their situation. It was twilight now. The darkness cast by the canopy of trees was thickening; it was hardto see the way ahead. How on earth would they find a way out? There were no lamps here. Chloe remembered – Oscar Wilde wasn’t far from the perimeter wall. Hopefully light from the street would spill in; perhaps there was a way out, somewhere close to his grave.
‘Well?’ prompted Joel.
Clearly he wasn’t going to let this rest. She sighed. ‘Oh, it’s just your bog-standard splitting-up story. Boy swears undying love and lifelong fidelity, boy cheats, girl finds out. At least it happened before we got married.’ She paused. ‘Even it was only a few days before.’
Joel stopped walking again, and the chain tightened, digging into her wrist. He stared at her, and she saw the penny dropping.
‘Oh fuck. Now I get it.’ He ran the fingers of his free hand through his hair. ‘He cheated on you during his stag weekend.’
‘Well done, Sherlock.’
‘What a dickhead.’
She gave him a long look. ‘But it’s not unusual, is it? Doesn’t the groom-to-be always get down and dirty with a stripper, or a–’
‘No, Chloe,’ he interrupted. ‘Honestly, you’ve got that wrong. I’ve never been on a stag where the groom shagged anyone, and I’ve been on a fair few. Sure, the strip clubs, the drinking, maybe a lap dance that goes to the wire. But there are lines that aren’t crossed. Boundaries.’
‘Oh really?’
‘Yes. And most strippers wouldn’t do that, anyway, even if the groom got carried away. Plus there’d be witnesses. I mean – my future brother-in-law was in that lot you just met. He’d snitch for sure if I misbehaved. Well – you would, wouldn’t you? If it was your sister. Sometimes even the dads go too.’
‘Which one was your brother-in-law?’
‘The one who chucked your phone onto the tomb. Rohan. I can’t stand him.’ He closed his eyes for a moment. ‘But he basically invited himself–’
