Tangle (Dogwood Lane 2)

Grabbing my toes, he shakes my feet. “Don’t overthink that.”

“You know I’m going to,” I admit. “But for the record, I think if you wanted to go after a woman like that, she’d be lucky to have you. More or less.”

He grins. “That would depend on the day.” He rubs the tops of my feet, looking at the darkened television. Questions drift across his face, and I wonder if he’s going to share them with me.

I also wonder if he’s going to admit he’s enjoying this as much as I am. There are no pretenses, no clamor to have to be someone we aren’t. But therein lies the problem—who we are just won’t work together.

“Why are you so anti-relationship?” I ask. “And don’t give me some bullshit answer like you always do.”

“Just call me out, why don’t you?”

“I did.”

He readjusts my feet on his lap and thinks. “I suppose it’s multifaceted.”

“I have all the time in the world.”

Falling back to the cushions, he presses my feet against his stomach. “It’s a lot of things . . .”

“Which is what ‘multifaceted’ means.”

He laughs, shaking his head. “I guess . . . I guess it’s because I hurt a girl when I was younger. I thought I was in love with her, and one day, I realized I wasn’t.” He frowns. “I didn’t want to marry her. I didn’t want to have kids with her. I didn’t want to do any of those things, although I loved her tremendously as a person.”

I watch a host of emotions flood his face, and my heart breaks as I see the pain he keeps hidden. “I’m sorry, Trevor.”

“She hurt herself.” He stares at some point in space. “I know it’s not my fault. And she’s okay now. But it shook me really hard that by changing my mind, I caused that. It seemed so unfair. To both of us.”

I pull my legs off his lap and scoot next to him. My heart pounds as I reach over and take his hand in mine. “That isn’t fair. To either of you. And I’m truly sorry that happened.”

“Me too.” He squeezes my hand before removing his from mine. “But that’s the main reason why I just don’t want to promise something I’m not sure I can make good on.”

“For the sake of conversation,” I say, “that’s what a relationship is, though. It’s promising to try something together and see if it works. And if it doesn’t, you part ways. And if it does, you have the option of going to the next level.”

“Or,” he says, “you just don’t start the process to begin with.”

The doorbell rings and I get to my feet, both relieved and saddened to stop our conversation. I pad across the floor and open it to let the delivery guy in. “Hold tight, Bobby. Let me grab my purse.”

I head to the kitchen and retrieve my wallet. Before I’m back, Bobby is gone and Trevor is standing in the foyer with the food.

“I forgot to give you some of my own guidelines yesterday,” he says. “The first one is this: it’s never okay for you to buy your own food when you’re with me.”

“But we’re at my house.”

“Celebrating your new job.” He carries the pizza into the kitchen and puts it on the table. “Now stop talking about weird stuff like relationships, and let’s eat pizza.”

“Okay.” I grab some plates and napkins. When I turn around, his phone is in his hand.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said about handling Liz,” he says.

The sound of her name makes me want to flinch. “What about it?”

“She’s going to be at my dad’s party this weekend. I can’t uninvite her or not attend myself. So although I can’t undo the fact that she’ll be there, I can be up front about what it won’t be.”

I pass a swallow down my throat. “True.”

“How’s this?” he asks. “I just sent this to Liz: ‘If you come, please bring a plus-one, as I will be. See you there.’ Sound good?”

Does it sound good? For Liz to hear that, yes. He needs to set that boundary with her. It sounds good, but my foolish heart needs to ignore the burning sensation in my throat and the million questions I have as to who is going with him to a place Liz will be. But I’m not about to ask that.

“Sounds great,” I say and hand him a plate. “Let’s eat.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

TREVOR

This is probably the worst idea I’ve ever had. And to be honest, I’ve had some doozies. Like the one that I came up with last night at the inn. It’s the one that started this whole train wreck of terrible ideas.

Terrible and potentially amazing.

But it’s logical, and logical is what you fall back on when you aren’t sure. Logic never fails.