Page 70 of What If We Break?
Even now, I had no time to entertain the thought because Brooke jumped off her seat and I knew she was about to head right out of the building. She didn’t react when Rina called her name. She didn’t even grab her jacket or purse before making her way toward the exit doors.
I quickly gathered Brooke’s belongings before reaching for my own, then looked at Rina for a brief moment.
There was regret etched into her features, but I couldn’t empathize with her.
“It’s okay not to want a relationship,” I began. “But that doesn’t give you the right to make assumptions about someone else’s.” I took my phone from the table and dropped it into Brooke’s purse.
“I know. I’m sorry, I wasn’t think?—”
“You weren’t.” That being said, I finally went after my fiancée.
29
BROOKLYN
Neither Reece nor I uttered a single word, daring to address what Rina said, but she sent me about a hundred messages in the last thirty minutes, apologizing profusely.
I wasn’t even mad at her. She simply said what I was sure almost everyone who met Reece and I thought. Besides, Rina was allowed to hate relationships.
That still didn’t make the whole situation less painful to think about.
As a heavy sigh involuntarily left my lungs, I finally threw the kitchen towel onto the counter instead of picking up another wet plate that Reece just set down.
“God, I hate this,” I mumbled, not thinking Reece was going to hear it over the noises of cutlery rubbing against one another. However, I was proven wrong.
“I take it your mind’s been running wild with stuff that both agrees and disagrees with Rina?” he asked, setting down a clean mug this time.
“Yeah…”
Reece reached for a clean towel to dry off his hands, then looked at me. “Yeah, mine did, too.”
Just by a millimeter, I felt my heart sink but I refused tolet it drop all the way and feel even more miserable before Reece got the chance to tell me what he was thinking. I learned a while ago that I had to let people speak their minds before I let my anxiety poison my thoughts.
Reece leaned against the kitchen counter. “Part of me wants to call Colin and your dad to tell them they’re both assholes.”
I chuckled softly but nodded my head because now that he mentioned it, I kind of wanted to do it too.
“They wouldn’t deserve it though. Not this time anyway,” he said, offering me a faint smile. “Because, Brooke, I had like an hour to think about this now, and… if you genuinely look at the whole situation, what exactly would they have done? Yes, Colin introduced me to you, but even if he hadn’t done that when we were little, I would’ve met you eventually. There’s no doubt in my mind that I would have fallen in love with you right on the spot even if I met you at thirteen for the first time. Or even later. We were just lucky that we got to meet earlier. That doesn’t mean Colin and Milesmadeus fall in love. I don’t even think that’s possible.”
“Manipulations,” I said. “They could’ve… I don’t know. Done something.”
He held out his hand for me, and without thinking, I took it. Reece pulled me closer, turned me around, and then wrapped his arms around my neck.
“Do you love me?” he asked, his voice almost a whisper.
I nodded without hesitation. “Of course I do.”
My love for Reece was one of the very few things in my life I hadneverquestioned before.
As much as I loved figure skating, I’d sometimes wonder if I’d always wanted to make figure skating my profession. I even once questioned whether my dad was lying to me about Emory not being my mother. While I did dismiss that theoryrather quickly because why would they lie about that, I still questioned it.
From the moment I realized I loved Reece, I had never questioned it. Not a single second in my life was I thinking we’d been better off as friends, or that my feelings were there because I’d been told to love him.
And I never questioned his love for me either.
“Do you think those feelings are there because your dad and his friends thought it’d be cute if we ended up together?” he asked.
I shook my head. “They said that?”
