Page 100 of Beating Heart
. . .
Emerson
“Who was that guy, Em?” Collin hissed from behind me as I stormed into my house, and Winnie followed us inside.
The nerve of this guy, just showing up here and thinking he was entitled to ask me anything.
“That is none of your damn business. What are you even doing here?” I dropped my purse on the counter and crossed my arms over my chest as I turned to face him.
It had been a long day at the office. I’d had a great interview, but then my text with Nash had left me feeling off. It was the first night in weeks that he hadn’t wanted to hang out. All my insecurities were coming out in full force, and then I’d come home to find the devil himself standing on my front porch.
“Well, you won’t take my calls, and I needed to speak to you.” He looked different. Tired. Pale. Frazzled.
Although Nash definitely added to Collin’s anxiety when he stormed over here like a freaking caveman.
It took all that I had not to kick Collin out and jump into Nash’s arms. I’d missed him all day, and I’d been disappointed that I wouldn’t be seeing him tonight, which was why I’d worked late.
But I needed this to end with Collin, so I’d have one final conversation with him if that would mean he would stop trying to reach me. I motioned for him to sit down on the couch, and I took the chair across from him, my dog lying right beside my chair protectively. “There is nothing more to talk about, Collin. You need to let this go and move on. I have.”
“I can see that. So, are you fucking him?”
“I’m going to give you the next two minutes to tell me why you’re here, and then I’m going to tell you to leave. My personal life is none of your damn business.”
“So it means nothing that I’ve not been sleeping or eating because I miss you? You won’t speak to me. You’re clearly fucking some random dude. And I’m the bad guy?” He threw his hands in the air.
It was the strangest thing. I’d spent more than a decade with this man, yet sitting here, with him acting completely unhinged—it did nothing to me.
I felt nothing.
I was more anxious about Nash being upset.
A man I’d only known for a few months.
A man who made me feel—everything.
“Collin.” My voice was completely calm and lacking any emotion. “I know how much you like to be the smartest guy in the room, and you like to wield it like some sort of trophy over everyone’s heads. But it won’t work here. You are the bad guy because you fucked my best friend for months before our wedding day.”
“I lost my mind, Emerson. Your residency was a nightmare, and you were working such long hours, and I was—I don’t know,” he pushed to his feet and paced around the room, “I was lonely.”
“You should have talked to me. But it wouldn’t have changed anything, Collin. I was in my final year of residency. Those are the hours that I was required to work. And you were traveling all the time anyway. You didn’t want to live together before we were married, so yeah, we were living separate lives. I get it. But I never once considered straying. I thought we were just going to get through those final challenging months, and after the wedding, we’d be on the other side of it,” I said, as he dropped back down to sit across from me.
He buried his head in his hands, and Winnie lifted her head to look at him before setting it back down. “What can I do to fix this, Em?”
“You can’t fix it. You can’t talk your way out of it or throw money at it. The truth is, we weren’t working, Collin. I was just too busy to realize it at the time. I didn’t know anything different, and sure, we had some good times over the years. But we were spending less and less time together these last three years. We both played a part in that,” I said, holding my hands up when he looked like he’d just found his opening. “But let me tell you what I didn’t do. I didn’t fuck another man while we were together. Let alone your best friend. It’s irreparable, Collin.”
“So you just waited until I was the bad guy, and then you fucked another man? Weeks after we were supposed to be married.” He raised a brow.
It hit me in that moment that this was what he always did. He was relentless when it came to winning an argument. And most of the time, people backed down. Hell, I’d probably backed down hundreds of times over the years because it just wasn’t worth the fight.
“Oh, my gosh. This is what you do, Collin.”
“What am I doing now?” he groaned.
“You just argue until you get your way.”
“No, I don’t. I’m just trying to win back the woman I love. This is me, fighting for you.”
“It’s a pattern. When you didn’t want to live together, I thought it was ridiculous. We’d been dating for years. We were engaged. We were both paying rent at two expensive apartments in the city. But you wanted to wait. You insisted that it was the proper thing to do. And I’m guessing that was really convenient, considering you were fucking my best friend for six months.” I shrugged, all of it hitting me like a ton of bricks now.
