Caspian (Carolina Reapers 8)

If even after he heard what I had to say he still didn’t want to talk to me, then I’d leave. Not happily, but I’d leave.

Swallowing my pride and pain and fear, I knocked on his front door.

A few seconds later, it swung open.

And I about swallowed my tongue.

“Can I help you?” the gorgeous woman asked. She had silky black hair that was gathered in an effortless knot on her head, and long legs covered in black leggings that left her feet bare. And she was painfully, beautifully pregnant. Like, full-on glowing like a goddess pregnant.

I blinked a few times, then stepped off the porch, re-checking the address number before returning to the porch. “I…um…is Caspian—”

“Langley,” Caspian called from somewhere behind the woman. “Please get off your feet,” he said, and the words were so sweet, so pleading, that tears filled my eyes.

Langley rolled her eyes, not noticing my close-to-the-edge-break-down. “He’s so demanding,” she said, spinning on those bare feet and waddling gracefully back into the house.

Caspian took her place in the doorway, his eyes wide and hurt, but what right did he have to be hurt when he had so clearly lied to me when he was with me?

“What are you doing here, Ryleigh?” he asked, and even his voice sounded wounded. Like I’d somehow broken him.

“You wouldn’t answer my calls,” I whispered, my voice suddenly tight like I was being choked. I tried to swallow around it, to get air into my lungs.

“I didn’t figure there was anything else left to say,” he said, folding his arms over his massive chest. “Was there?”

“Yeah,” I said, basically breathing the word.

“What?” he snapped, and I glared up at him, my heart shattering from the sight of Langley, from the life he’d so easily hidden from me.

I blew out a breath, and shook my head. “I came here to tell you I’m in love with you,” I blurted out the words. “But it seems I’m about eight months too late.” I rolled my eyes, and spun around, totally ready to drive back to my motel and fall to pieces in private.

17

Caspian

“You what?” I snapped at Ryleigh’s back as she walked away, heading for the rental car parked in my driveway.

She was here. In Charleston. Yelling at me like I was the one who’d shot this relationship to hell. And what the fuck did eight months have anything to do with it? Like going back to last season would have prevented all this?

“You heard me!” she shouted back, spinning slightly and throwing her arms out in exasperation.

“There is no fucking way you love me.” The words dripped off my tongue with all the sweetness of battery acid. What the hell was she doing here, anyway? Had she really flown halfway across the country just to get a front row seat to the annihilation of my heart?

That same, stupid fucking heart slammed to life at the sight of her, demanding I haul her into my arms and make her choose me. Choose us.

Love me? She wouldn’t have been cozied up with Chuck and their dream house if she loved me. She just loved the idea of me.

“I’m sorry?” She turned fully and stalked back up my sidewalk, pausing at the bottom of the steps to my covered porch.

“You. Do. Not. Love. Me.” I folded my arms across my chest to keep from making the mistake of reaching for her. “Ryleigh, you don’t even know me. Not really.” Not if she thought I’d honestly settle for being her consolation prize.

“I know you better than anyone around here does!” She gestured to the upscale neighborhood where the majority of our team lived. “Maybe I don’t know the NHL star who spends his nights with models and drives a fancy car, but I know the guy you were before you got here. The guy who spent his days practicing in that barn or running until his legs gave out! I knew the guy who protected his little sister and kept the bullies off my back.”

The air felt heavy in my chest and it had nothing to do with the humidity.

“So don’t you dare stand there and tell me that I don’t love you! Especially with everything you’ve kept from me!”

“Everything I’ve kept from you?” I shook my head and laughed, the sound ripe with self-deprecation. “That’s rich coming from someone who fucking used me to get back at her ex-boyfriend—wait, back with her ex.”

“That’s not…” Her jaw dropped and hurt flashed through those beautiful, deceitful green eyes. “I don’t want Chuck.”

“Yeah, right.” I sucked in a deep breath and tried to rein in my emotions before they made an even bigger ass of me. “Look, you don’t love me, Ryleigh. I was just a convenient stand-in. Call it emotional displacement or whatever, but I’m just the guy who happened to fall right into the part of your life where you were missing someone.” My heart fractured, the cracks widening like fissures as I let myself absorb the reality of it. “You don’t want me, and maybe you don’t actually want Chuck, either.”