CHAPTERSIXTEEN
Rev paced across the deck behind his cabin, consumed by the betrayal of his best friend. Blinded by his rage, he refused to allow Eddie’s stinging words to sink into his psyche. Everything would hinge upon a single question he had for Hallie. He was pissed, and there was no hiding it.
Hallie had texted to say she was going to pop by for dinner and wondered if it was okay. He wanted to tell her to get fucked, but first, he had a few questions for her. He needed answers that only she could provide.
He had to know if she was a willing participant in Gerri’s trickery.
Who am I kidding? It’s over between us no matter what. Because it was all a sham from the beginning.Still, he needed to know if Hallie had played along with the plot to set him up, or was she somehow innocent in all of this bullshit and treachery?He might be a lot of things, but he was no one’s puppet to be played with. Fucking Eddie knew better, yet he set him up anyway. They had spent hours upon hours discussing the whole arranged mating thing that his mom had wanted for him and how against it he was. Yet, Eddie did it anyway.
Hallie knocked on the front door, finally opening it after waiting for several minutes. Rev couldn’t bring himself to move his feet forward to open the damn door and greet her, no matter how damn hard he had tried.
“Rev? I brought food.” She called out, stepping inside his house.
Rev suddenly appeared through the back patio door. He could tell by the look on her face that he had startled her.
“There you are. I thought maybe I missed you or something. I picked up some food for dinner. I was hoping maybe we could …”
“Forget it. I’m not hungry. I’m not much of anything,” he said flatly.
The beautiful smile that had graced her face quickly disappeared.
“Um, okay. What’s wrong? Not feeling well?” she asked.
He could tell by the tone of her voice that she was seriously concerned something had happened.
“I’m just going to come right out and say this. Eddie stopped by today. He let a little secret he’d had slip out. He told me that you and I meeting was no accident. It was all a set-up through a matchmaker named Gerri Wilder. Do you know anything about that?” he asked. He wanted to beg her to tell him that it wasn’t true and that she had no idea what he was talking about.
“Oh.” Hallie blushed, telling him everything he needed to know. “But I can explain all that. It’s nothing …”
“It is something. It’s everything. It’s a loss of trust,” he shouted, fury raging through his mind, his body.
“Trust? What? Seriously, it’s no big deal, Rev. I can explain everything if you just give me a freaking minute.”
“No. I’m going to explain something to you, and I want you to listen because I’m not going to repeat myself. I thought what we had was something real. Something special. Like destiny or fucking fate. Those aren’t just words to me, love. So, when we met, and how we met, I believed we were part of that. Part of something bigger.”
“Just let me explain, please. Yes, Sierra asked me to meet Gerri Wilder. And yes, I was hoping to find someone. She suggested you, but only because I had been doing my research on Bayou Rouge and I’d seen you around. I was curious about you, so she just wanted to nudge us together, but I ended up changing my mind about the whole thing. None of it sat right with me.”
“Changed your mind? Was that before or after you drove down that dead-end road to stalk me?” he growled.
“Seriously, Rev. It was nothing. I’m sure we would’ve eventually met anyway. I’ve been working out here for a while now. It was only a matter of time before we ran into each other. I don’t see what the big deal is.”
“Maybe there are things about me that I don’t want to explain to you now. Things I don’t feel the need to explain to you or anyone. Did you ever think of that?”
He could easily see that Hallie was suddenly incensed by his attitude, and he had clearly pushed some of her buttons. “Things? Like secrets? So who’s the sneaky asshole now? You don’t get to preach to me about some meaningless meeting with a matchmaker, something I basically called off anyway. No, you don’t get to tell me you’ve got some weird secrets that you were or weren’t going to share? You’re the sneaky one.”
“Good. Then it’s over,” Rev shouted. His body shook. His tiger tried to claw his way out to stop what was about to happen.
“Over? Just like that? You aren’t even willing to give us a chance?” Hallie threw the carryout bags, spreading food across the entire living room.
She stormed out the door and turned around. “Thank you, at least. Thank you for letting me know I shouldn’t invest another minute with an asshole who can simply call it quits just because he got one of his little whiskers bent out of shape.”
Stepping off the deck, she smacked a windchime so hard it flew into the yard. “And that fucking thing is annoying too,” she shouted.
* * *
It wasn’tuntil she slammed the door on her jeep that she allowed her tears to run freely. She gave up trying to hold them back along with the hurt she was feeling.
“Fucking asshole. You have no idea what you are missing out on,” she cried. Rev had every right to be upset about the whole thing with Gerri, but if he would have only listened to her side of the story, he would have realized he was overreacting.
But no. He wouldn’t fucking listen. Not to a single damn word she had to say. He had made up his mind before she even got there, and that’s what pissed her right the fuck off.
They were great together. He knew it, and so did she. But she wasn’t about to beg someone to be with her no matter how much she had wanted to. Every part of her body screamed for her to stomp back in there and make him listen … make him understand.
She wouldn’t, though. She had far more pride and self-worth than to do something so damn dumb. Besides, it was better that she found out now what he was really like rather than waste another minute falling even harder for him.
Still, it sucked big, furry, damn balls. She had thought, had hoped, what they had was the start of something magical, something amazing. At first, she wasn’t sure. But as the time away from him had passed, he had texted often and had replied immediately to her texts. They had talked every night before bed and again every morning. It had given her a false hope that they stood some sort of chance. That she hadn’t been just a one-night … err, one-weekend stand.
Whatever, she thought and headed back to her house.