For once, her body obeyed her brain. She didn’t look at him. Not once.
Not when he did introductions between her parents and Lily. Not when she shook Lily’s hand. Not when her mother cooed that it was so great that Will had found a nice girl.
Brynn’s eyes narrowed on her mother at that last bit. There was no way her parents approved of this artificial Barbie doll.
But they were all smiles, just like Lily.
Just what the hell was going on here?
This dinner was supposed to be her big comeback to her Real Life. Instead, she was the fifth wheel at her own family dinner, while her parents fawned over their pseudo-son and his all-wrong-for-him girlfriend?
Where did that thought come from?
Lily wasn’t wrong for Will at all.
Brynn tried to look at the other woman through different eyes, and was dismayed to realize that she could actually see Will with someone like this. Sure, she laughed just a little too loudly, and her rambling story about how she locked her keys in her car at the mall was a bit, well…mind-numbing. But there was also a sweet openness there.
Something Brynn knew she would never have.
“So how long have you two been together?” Marnie asked as she ushered everyone into the dining room.
“Oh, we went on a few dates years ago,” Lily said as she took the salad bowl out of Marnie’s hand as though she were freaking co-hostess. “Then this big jerk goes and moves across the country. But I was thrilled when he called me up this week and wanted to hang out.”
Hang out. Brynn knew what that meant. And she took it like a kick to the ovaries. Will was sleeping with this woman.
“Couldn’t forget her, huh, son?” Chris said, playing the dutiful fatherly role.
Will let out a low chuckle as his hand found the small of Lily’s waist. “Sometimes a guy realizes he needs a little sweetness in his life.”
Only years of carefully cultivated maturity stopped Brynn from gagging. She still managed not to avoid looking at Will.
It didn’t matter.
It didn’t matter that he’d brought a woman here just a week after they’d ended things. Didn’t matter that the woman gave Will secret smiles as though she owned him.
This was exactly why she’d selected Will for her little fling anyway. She’d known they could both move on without losing any skin in the game.
Although when she found herself sitting across the table from the two of them and watched Lily’s hand find Will’s leg, it didn’t quit
e feel like nothing.
“So you guys have been dating for…a week, then?” Brynn heard herself saying.
“Technically, yeah. But I haven’t been able to get her out of my mind for the last month or so,” Will said.
Brynn’s spine stiffened and finally, finally she let her eyes meet Will’s.
They were the same, boring old blue they’d always been. Except there was a chill in them she’d never seen before. Not even during their biggest spats or their most determined stages of ignoring each other had he seemed so lifeless to her.
“Hmm, well, I can’t imagine what took you so long to give the pretty girl a call,” Brynn said in her most polite tone.
Her dad leaned in under the guise of filling up Will’s glass as he gave her a warning, Brynn, under his breath.
She ignored her father.
Will’s expression didn’t change as he met hers coolly. “I’ve been a little busy the past few weeks,” he said mildly.
“Will works like a dog,” Lily chimed in.