Good Girl (Love Unexpectedly 2)

As though reading my thoughts, Vaughn reaches for the cup of coffee and drops the bomb of why he’s here.

“I got a wedding invitation yesterday,” he says quietly.

“And?”

“It’s Yvonne’s.”

I turn around. “Seriously? She’s marrying that prick?”

I’m trying to decide if I care. Leaning toward no.

Vaughn gives me a disgusted look. “You’re an idiot. It’s your wedding invitation, fool.”

“The fuck.” I jerk in surprise, hot coffee spilling over my hand, which earns another stream of curses as I turn on the faucet and run cold water on my hand, hoping to hell that either Vaughn’s lost his damn mind or I’m still asleep and this is the world’s worst nightmare.

“She’s been trying to get ahold of you,” he says quietly.

“Finn told me.”

“You shouldn’t have ignored her, man. She got desperate.”

I turn off the sink and grab a paper towel. “Right. This is my fault. She cheats on me, I tell her the wedding’s off, she decides no it’s not, and sends out invitations anyway?”

He takes a sip of coffee and studies me calmly. “I’m gonna ask you something, and you’re gonna get pissed.”

“Wonderful,” I mutter. “That sounds really great.”

“Had she not cheated on you…would you have married her?”

I don’t look at him as I pour myself more coffee. “I don’t know,” I say finally.

“So you were having doubts even before?”

I shrug. “If you’re asking if her affair felt like an out, yeah. If you’re asking if I was a little relieved…yeah to that too. If she hadn’t had the affair, would I have figured out that our marriage would be an unhappy one in time to call it off? I don’t know.”

To my relief, he doesn’t give me shit. Just nods slowly with that thoughtful look on his face that he gets whenever he’s gearing up to interfere with my life.

“What are you going to do?” he asks. “A part of me hoped that she just sent the invitation to me, knowing it’d be a way to get your attention. But everyone has one, Preston.”

I feel a surge of rage so intense I literally don’t know what to do with it, and it’s all I can do to slowly set my coffee back down and brace my hands on the counter while taking deep breaths.

I want to rage that this isn’t fair. That it’s not my fault that Yvonne’s being a stubborn bitch who’s trying to manipulate me down the aisle.

But of course it is my fault, at least partially so.

I don’t regret calling off the wedding, not for one second. But I do regret that I didn’t see the warning signs that she wasn’t going to take the rejection lying down.

In my defense, I genuinely thought that disappearing would help get it through her thick skull that I wasn’t coming back around, but clearly I’ve made a major judgment error, because she’s just called my bluff in a big way.

And hell if I know how to get out of it.

“I’ll deal with Yvonne,” I mutter, picking up my mug once my temper’s subsided slightly.

“How?”

“I don’t fucking know, man,” I snap. “You got any ideas how to call off a wedding?”

“I’m working on it,” Vaughn says.