“Are you fucking kidding me?” Dani shouts.
Her brother and best friend get engaged, and the first words out of her mouth are “are you fucking kidding me”? My heart begins to break. I suck in a breath, and the tears continue to fall down her cheeks. My eyes travel back and forth between Dani and Zach. The atmosphere in the room changed drastically from love to…I don’t even know the words to describe what is happening right now.
Kyler cautiously walks to his girlfriend, glancing back toward us before he places his hand on her arm. “Aren’t you excited for your brother and your best friend?”
“Are you seriously going to lecture me right now?” Her eyes are full of rage now, and I can’t hold back my tears.
A sob rips from my throat. This was supposed to be the happiest day of my life—just a moment ago it was.
Zach steps in front of me, his arm wrapping around my waist as I grip his shirt and continue to cry. Is she not happy about me and Zach getting married or us being together at all? Maybe we read her being happy for us all wrong.
“Fuck, Dani! Why can’t you just be happy for Haylee and me? Huh? It’s always just about you still, isn’t it?” The anger is radiating from my fiancé’s body.
Dani leaves the room for a moment, then returns with her purse and keys in hand. Oh, no. This is not happening again. I am not going to watch my best friend walk out that door again.
“Oh, please. Love is for assholes. All it brings is pain, and anyone would be a fool to believe in that shit…that happy ever afters can actually happen.”
Emmett. My heart sinks in my chest when I realize this is another moment my brother is missing. That’s it. She thought of him too. Of course she did. Even though she has been happy lately, a new version of her old self, in fact, and I can tell that she loves Kyler, her mind drifted to the one she always thought she would see in front of her. I need to stop her.
I go to step forward to stop her, and Zach puts his hand in front of me to stop me as Kyler approaches her first. He reaches for her hand, and she snaps.
“Don’t touch me. What, you think you can fix me? That we can just play house and live out our happy ever after bullshit? You’re nothing but a replacement. You may have replaced Emmett in my brother’s world, but you won’t in mine. This is… This is…”
Kyler’s face goes white. Zach falls back as if her words punched him. My arms wrap around him to hold him up. I can’t believe this is happening. Can I pinch myself and wake up from this nightmare?
“What, baby… It’s love? It’s real? It’s raw? Because it’s all of those things, Dani! Why can’t you just let me in?” Kyler’s voice is full of anger and hurt.
I have known him for years now, and I have never seen him like this.
“It was a mistake, Kyler. You can’t make me happy, and you’re a fool to believe you can. I’m incapable of loving or being loved. I’m just broken,” Dani fires back at him, giving us one more glance before she leaves, slamming the door.
Silence fills the room as we all just stand there, unsure how to react. Did she just leave for good? Is she coming back?
I know what she said hurt, but I know her more than she knows herself and she didn’t mean those words only out of hurt. By the time Kyler finally comes back to reality, her words have left a brand on him.
He rushes to the front door, opening it to find her already gone. “Fuck! Where did she go?”
Zach turns in my arms, his hands cupping my cheeks to rub the tears away. “Baby, I am so sorry.”
For the second time today, Zach gets on one knee in front of me, this time begging for forgiveness, only there is nothing to forgive.
“It’s okay; we need to find her. I told you once before that I have her back—I’m not letting her go.” I nod over to my fiancé’s best friend, who is sitting on the floor with his head down.
Panic of the reality that his sister just walked out the door finally hits, and Zach’s eyes go wide and he rises.
“Fuck.” He looks over at Kyler and sees that his phone is in his hand. “Is she answering?”
The look on his face has devastation written all over as he shakes his head no.
Zach crouches down in front of his best friend and puts his hand on his shoulder. “Hey, we’re gonna find her okay?”
He nods, but doesn’t say anything as he hits “send” again.
I back up to the couch, pull my legs to my chest, and rest my head on my knees as I try to think like Dani. She just witnessed me and her brother get engaged. I replay her words over and over again. Where would she go when her family is out of town? She wouldn’t have really left, would she? I mean, all she took was her purse, keys, and phone. She left all the rest of her belongings behind. I look down at the ring on my left hand and stare at the combination of diamond and amethysts—my brother’s birthstone.
Oh my God. Emmett. That’s it!
I ignore the conversation going on in the background between Zach and Kyler, and I hop off the couch and gather my things. Crap, where are my keys? I see the keys to the Jeep on the table and grab them before heading to the door.