Page 97 of Mountain Dreams

“I’m starving, aren’t you?” she said as the line inched forward.

“Um-hmm,” Cody muttered.

Glancing at his profile, she saw his brow was knitted with worry, which surprised her because she’d expected him to feel relieved. Wyatt hadn’t said when they were moving, but this might have been their last encounter with him. At first, she’d felt somewhat guilty about her relationship with Cody, but not anymore. Wyatt was literally moving on, and so was she. There was nothing to feel guilty about anymore.

She waited until they were seated and had placed their orders before she questioned Cody. “What do you think about Wyatt’s news?”

“Interesting. Listen, there’s something I have to tell you.”

Uh-oh. She didn’t like the sound of that or the seriousness of his expression. “Okay,” she said hesitantly.

“I kept something from you about Sadie.”

“Ohmigod. Did you used to date her?”

He scowled. “No. Nothing like that.”

“What, then?”

He took a deep breath. “Back at the beginning, when you told me about the napkin…I was at the bar one night, and I saw them. He was there with some guy, but the way he interacted with her…I just knew something was going on.”

“You kept this from me this whole time?” Obviously, he expected her to be mad, but honestly, she didn’t know what to feel.

“Yes, and I’m sorry. At the time, I didn’t know how to tell you, and I hated myself for it.”

She stared at him for a few beats, trying to remember the timeline of everything that had gone down between her and Wyatt. “That time you confronted him at the shop…”

“I didn’t tell him I saw them together. I waited for him to confess.”

“Did he?”

“He never said her name, but I knew it was her.”

She sighed, her mind reeling with the revelations.

“Your pancakes will be right out,” said the waitress as she refilled their coffee cups.

“Thanks,” Cody said distractedly.

After she walked away, Maddie met his gaze. “So, even though I suspected Wyatt was cheating, or at least was about to, you didn’t want to confirm it.”

He plunged his hands in his hair, making it more rumpled than it already was after rolling out of bed this morning. “I thought it would just make things worse, and I hated to do that to you. I didn’t want to cause you any more pain.”

“It wasn’t long after your visit to the shop that he broke off the engagement.”

Cody slowly nodded, and everything came together in her mind.

“You did the right thing,” she said.

He blinked a few times, looking like he hadn’t heard her right. “I did?”

“Yes. I would do the same thing if I suspected one of my friend’s boyfriends of cheating.”

“You would?”

She nodded vigorously. “What if you had been wrong or misread the situation? It was better to get Wyatt to confess than be the bearer of bad news.”

“Did he confess to you?”