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“I’m just—” He closed his eyes a second, his lips pressed together. “Frustrated.”

“About us?”

“Yeah.” Silence. “I had a conversation with my mother earlier.”

A siren went off in the distant reaches of my mind. “Oh? What did she say?”

“I shouldn’t worry you with this. It’s pointless.”

“Just tell me.”

“She’s got me worried about what people will say when they find out about us. I know I said ‘fuck people’ before, but I think I underestimated the degree to which people can be shitty to others.”

My heart beat clumsily in my chest. “Does she know about us?”

“No. Not that I know of.”

“Well, what did she say, specifically?”

“She thinks we spend too much time together, and when she heard I took you to the new house and then ate dinner here, she got weird about it.”

Of course she did. But Drew and I had gotten into enough arguments about his beloved mother to last me a lifetime. That was a part of my marriage I did not want to revisit. And I was working on being more understanding of Lenore, anyway. I could be the bigger fucking person. “Maybe she was hurt you didn’t take her first,” I suggested.

“I think there’s some of that for sure,” he went on, turning to lean on the counter beside me, “but then she started in about what people will say if they notice my car here, or see me coming and going all the time, or see us out in public together. She thinks people will gossip about how tacky it is, and even though she knows there’s nothing unsavory going on”—he did his best dramatic impression of Lenore—“the rumors and name-calling will be out of control.”

I nodded, my eyes on my toes. “Right.”

“She claims to be concerned for your reputation, and for Abby’s well-being. She’s worried that kids Abby goes to school with will hear their asshole parents talking and repeat what’s being said.”

My stomach turned. I looked up at him. “Do you think that’s true?”

“I didn’t at first. But then she went on about how people are more forgiving of the man in these situations, how they’ll excuse him because we’re all just Neanderthals following our dicks around and trying to stick it in whoever we can find, but that woman are held to a higher standard and judged more harshly.”

I started twisting my ring. “She’s got a point.”

“The moment I thought about someone calling you a name or saying anything that would hurt your feelings or Abby’s, I wanted to fucking put my fist through the wall.” Wes spoke through clenched teeth.

That almost made me smile.

“The conversation ended badly between my mother and me, so I stormed out and went to have a beer so I could cool off. But then this group of women came into the bar, sat at a table right behind me, and proceeded to talk about half the town, including me, in a way that made me feel like maybe my mother is right.”

I picked up my head. “What did they say about you?”

The color in his face deepened. “Nothing much.”

“Tell me.”

“Just a bunch of stupid hot doctor jokes.”

It wasn’t the whole truth, but I let it go. “Yeah. Drew used to get that, too.”

Wes watched me playing with my ring, his expression pained. Maybe he didn’t like being reminded that I’d been his brother’s wife, but that was our fucking reality. I told you this would be too hard.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said. “I want to protect you, but I want to be with you, too. It’s so fucking unfair.”

“It is.” Life. You bitch.

He turned toward me and looped his arms around my waist. Our hips rested together, and I played with one of the buttons on his shirt, focusing on my fingers and not his face.


Tags: Melanie Harlow After We Fall Romance