I leaned back in my chair, hand peeling away the label on my beer bottle. I thought back to last weekend, when I’d gone over to Breanna’s that Sunday morning right after she’d returned from her trip, prepared to lay it all out in the open.
I honestly expected her to hit me or cry and blubber that she loved me (even though we both knew she didn’t) and reiterate how she’d saved me from my own heartbreak years ago, but that’s not what had happened…
Breanna had sat back on her couch, crossing her legs underneath her body, and smiled. A rush of uncertainty went through me and I was about to put my shields up, but then she surprised me.
“You and Ivy belong together, Dawson. It’s okay.”
I was stunned. I just stared at her, wondering where the catch was.
My brow furrowed. “What? You were going crazy a few weeks ago… but now, you’re okay with me breaking up with you?”
She shrugged, looking around the room before bringing her baby-blues back to mine. “I care about you, you know that, but we both know that what we had… was nothing more than sex and companionship. There isn’t that die-for-you type of love with us. Not like it is with you and Ivy. I know you’re going to leave here and go to her,”
I opened my mouth explain, to tell her about the kiss, but she stopped me. “It’s okay Dawson. I thought long and hard this week, after our last conversation…” Breanna’s head dipped low and then she brought it back up, eyes squinting. “I can’t even remember why I hated her all those years ago.
“My parents always talked so badly about her family, and she was like this mortal enemy to me because of how often my mom would diss on hers. Even in grade school, my mom forced me to participate in this stupid spelling-bee, all because she wanted me to beat Ivy.”
Breanna chuckled, mouth opening wider. “Now that I think about it, it was crazy how psycho my mom always acted toward them and how she always forced me to go out of my way to treat her like shit.”
I was a little confused, not sure what to say. I mean, I knew that Breanna’s family and Ivy’s never, ever got along. I knew it had something to do with their rival in dealerships, which seems so fucking stupid, but I didn’t realize that it went that far. It made me angry for Ivy and it made me feel a little bad for Breanna.
“Do you want to know what my mom said when Ivy’s parents died?”
I walked a little closer to Breanna, letting my guards slide down. “What?”
She nibbled on her lip, clasping her hands in her lap, working her fingers back and forth. “She said… ‘good riddance.’”
My eyes widened as anger flew through my body. Not anger with Breanna, of course not, but what kind of person says that after someone burns up in a fucking fire? What the fuck?
“Wow,” I said, and Breanna nodded.
“Yeah. It hasn’t always been rainbows and shit with her, like everyone assumes. She puts on this perfect little façade of having a wonderful husband and daughter, getting lip injections and climbing her way up the ladder at St. Joseph’s, becoming the dean’s right hand, but she’s so fake and mean. She’s always been so spiteful and it’s taken me a little while, but I’ve realized that I don’t want to turn out like her. At all.”
My stomach formed a knot. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this before? Like, when I was your boyfriend?”
Isn’t that what boyfriends are for? To be there for their girlfriends? I sure as hell wanted to be there for Ivy, and she wasn’t even considered my girlfriend yet.
Breanna shrugged again. “We didn’t really have that type of relationship, Dawson.” She laughed. “We talked about sex, and then had sex, and then…that was about it.”
“I was a shitty boyfriend to you.” Even more so since I had just kissed Ivy behind her back. Yep, Hell party of one for me.
She crinkled her nose. “I wasn’t the best girlfriend, either. You and I just… aren’t meant to be.”
I nodded, agreeing with her because it was true.
We both knew who I was meant to be with.
I think everyone knew.
…I breathed out a long sigh and gl
anced back up at my brother, closing out my thoughts of Breanna. He was still messing around with the deck of cards and getting the poker chips ready. We hadn’t had a poker night in a long, long time. Mainly because he’d been so wrapped up in Carrie, but now that Ivy proved the whole her-stealing-his-money shit, he’d dumped her and had started to be… Emmett, again. Well, the good Emmett.
Not the one that I had to bail out of a jail every few months.
He’d gotten his shit together, finally.
“Well, there were some things I didn’t really know about her, and she’d worked through her shit, so we ended it on okay terms.”