From Fake to Forever (Newlywed Games 2)

But how did he know what would be good for Lynhurst Enterprises? He couldn’t even answer a simple question about his post-merger plans, and his track record for earning a promotion to CEO started and ended with accidentally marrying a woman his mother approved of.

Which he’d then turned around and used as leverage to keep Meredith around. It was far worse than anything Avery had done in the pursuit of winning. A sick sense of dread heated his chest.

He couldn’t think with Meredith in his lap. Carefully, he set her on the couch and turned away, unable to look at her for fear she’d read something in his expression he didn’t want to reveal.

“I can’t—” He swallowed. He couldn’t even say it.

He didn’t deserve her. She didn’t deserve to be married to him, a manipulative SOB who’d suddenly realized he didn’t want to be handed anything because of how he’d spun the situation. They weren’t even married because he’d earned Meredith’s love. It was an accident.

She was right. He hadn’t figured out how to grow up in Vegas.

“Why can’t we go back to the way things were?” he asked, desperation pulling things out of his mouth without his consent. “Why does love have to be a part of this?”

But it was too late to go back. He knew that. Two years too late.

“Because that’s what I want,” she suggested quietly. “I won’t settle for less than everything. I spent two years trying to forget you and it didn’t work. Because I fell in love with you in Vegas and was too stupid to realize it. I want what we started back then.”

“Vegas wasn’t real.”

It had been a mirage, guiding him down the wrong path. Guiding him toward a goal he could never achieve. The broken company wasn’t going to magically come back together because he’d written a few documents describing the new corporate structure. Even if he and Avery pulled off the merger, it wouldn’t magically fix all the problems he had with his sister or with his father, both of whom he would be working with again.

And he’d become CEO because he’d gotten married. Not because he’d created a vision for the company’s future. Not because he’d earned it.

If Vegas wasn’t real, then neither was anything in his relationship with Meredith.

“Yes. It was real,” she insisted. “As real as what’s happening in our marriage. Can’t you see that what happened in Vegas wasn’t ever meant to stay there?”

“Vegas was about sex,” he said flatly. “You can’t sit there and tell me you were waxing philosophical when you were screaming my name that second time in the shower.”

Harsh. But he needed to distance her. For once. He didn’t trust himself one iota at this point.

Coolly, she blinked. “But afterward, I didn’t get dressed and leave. I’m glad I didn’t because that’s when we connected. It may have started out as two people with a mutual need for an anonymous release, but that’s not how it ended. The whole time, we were taking baby steps toward the future, but it’s a future where we’re together forever. That’s the point. It still hasn’t ended because neither of us wants it to end.”

As always, she read him easily. “You’re right. I could have ended this many times and I didn’t.”

Because he was incredibly selfish. That was how he was like his father, a danger he’d ignored, assuming love was the problem when all along it was something else entirely. Something he had no idea how to guard against.

He’d been turning their relationship to his advantage from second one, ensuring he alone had all the leverage and peeking under every rock to uncover her motives so she didn’t get the drop on him.

The whole time he’d been wondering what she was doing to him, it never occurred to him to pay attention to what he was doing to her. He’d been leading her to expectationville by inviting her into his home, and into his bed.

He owed it to her to give her the divorce she’d come for so she could get started on being a grown-up. Without him there to screw it up for her again.

“We can’t have a real marriage and I can’t be in love with you,” he told her dully.

Not yet. Maybe not ever, but he couldn’t ask her to stick around until he learned to be selfless. He owed her for everything she’d done for him. Letting her go was the right thing. The grown-up thing.

The stark emotion in her expression clawed at his windpipe and he shut his eyes for a beat. When he opened them, tears had gathered in her eyes and she shook her head in disbelief.

“That’s it? You’re giving up what we have?”