Made for You (The Best Mistake 2)
Page 98
Will Thatcher loved her.
And she…
She had never felt so lost. She had no idea what to say. Had no idea how to make this go away, or how to fix it.
She opened her mouth to say something. Anything. But her brain couldn’t put the pieces together. Couldn’t reconcile that the Will who’d always hated her had never hated her at all.
And that the Will she hated could be…
No. They’d spent their entire lives making each other miserable, and he wanted to push that all aside for something that could never work?
She was ice and order and calm. He was fire and instinct and chaos.
He would hurt her. And she’d already hurt him.
There was nothing for her to say.
Brynn forced herself to watch his eyes. Forced herself to recognize the exact second that he gave up.
The moment he realized that she wasn’t going to be saying it back.
All the fire and heat dropped from his gaze as he gently let her drop down to her feet. His hands fell away from her, arms falling loosely to his sides.
Brynn felt the loss of contact acutely. She wanted it back.
“Will, can’t we just…I need time.”
He gave a quick shake of his head, before planting a tender kiss on her forehead. “You’ve had plenty of time, Brynn.”
A sob hiccuped in her throat as she felt the meaning behind that kiss. She knew what that kiss meant. Knew Will well enough to understand what he wasn’t telling her.
He wanted all or nothing, and he was done waiting.
That kiss had been a good-bye.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Routine is the path to your future.
—Brynn Dalton’s Rules for an
Exemplary Life, #37
I look like a freak.”
Brynn sat back in her chair and set her distal end cutters on the tray before peeling back off her latex gloves. She tried for her most reassuring smile, but the truth was, she was bone tired. Tired of painstakingly attaching metal to misshapen teeth only to get petulant complaints in return.
“You don’t look like a freak.”
Abby Cornwell’s fourteen-year-old face scowled up at her, and Brynn felt a pull of sympathy. Between the thick glasses, the frizzy hair, the acne-ridden skin, and now the mouthful of metal, Abby hadn’t exactly hit the adolescent jackpot.
It will get better, sweetie.
Except sometimes it didn’t. Even when you did everything right, there were no guarantees. Because having straight teeth didn’t bring happiness. Apparently, neither did creating them.
“You look great,” Brynn said, leaning forward and giving Abby’s arm a quick squeeze.
Abby gave her an oh, please look that was apparently written into the female DNA to develop around the age of eleven.