Page 66 of The Best Man Problem
“Thank you,” she acknowledged without looking up. She tilted her head to the side. “I brought your beer.”
He looked at the small side table to see his beer bottle sitting there, slightly shredded label looking very telling of his current mood.
“Oh damn!” She slapped the game as her last ball slid down the side behind the bumpers.
The scoreboard displayed an impressive number, but he knew Lilly could do better. Seemed both of them were feeling off tonight.
She turned from the machine, bright green eyes staring him directly in the face. Challenging him. “Your game.”
All right. He’d play.
He handed over her drink, taking up a position in front of the machine and feeding it a quarter. He focused on the game, watching the shiny silver ball whiz and fling up and down the ramps, banging against the flappers as he pressed the buttons, hitting sensor after sensor to tick his score higher and higher.
“So,” Lilly said in his ear from her position behind his shoulder. “About what happened?”
His concentration broke, mind flying back to that morning, the warm bed, the sweet, comforting smell of her in his arms, the absolute disaster that followed. The ball sped down a ramp, sliding past the flappers into the depths of the machine.
She snorted as he cued up his next ball, pulling down the spring-loaded pin to give it a solid starting smack.
“You did that on purpose,” he grumbled.
“Of course I did,” she replied. “All’s fair in love and pinball.”
He swallowed at the word “love” but kept his focus on the game.
“Now, about your man-child freak out after I explained to you about what happened between the jerk and me?”
He gave her a quick glance over his shoulder. Quick, because he knew she was trying to distract him from the game, and dammit, it was working.
“I did not have a man-child freak out. What the hell even is that?”
“It’s when a grown-ass man hears something he doesn’t like and decides to be all pouty and sulky about it. Like a child.”
“I wasn’t pouty.”
“But you don’t deny the sulky part?”
He let out a frustrated breath. “What do you want to know, Lilly?”
She was quiet for a moment. He heard the sucking sound of her straw before she answered him.
“I want to know why you acted the way you did. Why you acted like it was my—”
Her words cut off with a hitch. He abandoned his game to focus on the conversation, looking up to see her visibly blink back tears. Shit. He was the world’s biggest asshole. He knew what she thought. That he blamed her. And yeah, maybe for a split second he had, but it was only a knee-jerk reaction. He’d had some time to think about things, and he knew his freezing her out at the wedding venue had been a dick move. Especially after all she shared with him.
Straightening his shoulders, he mentally prepared himself for the explanation he knew he had to give her.
“I was married.” He paused, letting her take in that information. By the raising of her dark eyebrows, he’d surprised her. “Jessa, my ex-wife, worked at the local diner in the town where I used to live. After a few months of friendly flirting, I asked her out. She said yes, and we dated for about a year before I proposed. We got married eight months later.”
Lilly nodded as if the timeline matched. He’d figured a year was long enough to get to know the person you wanted to spend the rest of your life with. He’d been wrong.
“We were married for two years before I found out she’d been cheating on me.”
“Oh, Lincoln.” Lilly’s hand squeezed his arm, expression filling with pain. “That’s awful.”
He shrugged as if it hadn’t ripped his fucking heart out at the time. “Yeah. I thought everything was going great. We’d even been talking about starting a family.”
Thank God they hadn’t.
