Page 117 of Let Me Keep You

We eat in silence for a few minutes, all of us deep in thought. “You have to do something,” Tyler finally speaks up. “Robert doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who’s gonna give up on getting what he wants, and you can’t be the type of woman to give in to his demands.”

“He’s not. Trust me when I say I won’t be crawling back to him. I’ve been thinking about it, and I dunno if this will work, but if I tell everyone the wedding is off, no one would expect us to be together. People will start talking, which is exactly what he doesn’t want, and the gossip will spread. Once it gets back to him, maybe then he’ll finally stop and move on. He’s too concerned about his reputation to retaliate once it’s public knowledge. If anything happened to me, every single person would point the finger at him. It’s kind of like an insurance policy if he came after me.”

“You should text the wedding planner yourself and tell her it’s no longer happening,” she suggests. “I bet he’s still moving forward with everything, based on the note attached to those flowers.”

Tyler sits and listens to us go back and forth with different scenarios. “That’s not a bad idea. Telling people would make it official.”

I take a few more bites until my plate is clean. Sitting back, I suck in a deep breath, feeling full.

“You want more? I made extra,” Tyler offers with a smile.

I smile at the sweet thought. “No, thanks. I’m stuffed to the brim and not sure where I’d put it.” Meeting his gaze, I blush at the way he’s studying me. “Thank you so much for dinner. It was amazing. The wine tasted good too. The company is even better.”

Everleigh’s done eating too and helps clean Tyler’s mess in the kitchen.

“Gemma, maybe you should come over every night for the rest of eternity so Tyler will make dinner like this on the regular.”

He chuckles. “Nice try.”

Tyler and I exchange a look, and for a brief second, that familiar electricity streams through me. I think he feels it too because his Adam’s apple bobs in his throat. Too many unspoken words flow between us, and I force myself to focus my attention on Everleigh.

“Where’s Sassy?” she finally asks.

“I took her for a walk when I got home from work, and after she devoured her food, she went to bed. She’s in your room,” he says.

“Ahh, okay. Gonna go check on my baby now.” Everleigh shoots me a wink when Tyler looks away, then walks down the hallway, leaving us to ourselves.

“You’re pretty rude for not telling me the truth about you and Ruby,” I reiterate.

“You should’ve asked if you weren’t sure.” We walk to the living room and sit on the couch.

“It wasn’t my business to ask or get involved,” I admit with a shrug. “But it wasn’t that hard to assume when I saw her in here wearing only a towel.”

“We took separate showers after working out together,” he explains with a shit-eating grin. “I obviously didn’t know you were gonna show up, but it was adorable to watch you get jealous.”

“Jealous?”

“Yep, I think that’s what we call it these days. You thought we were sleeping together, and it bothered you.” He smirks.

I groan, mortified that he could see that.

“Guess I’m more transparent than I thought.”

There’s no denying how it made me feel when I saw Tyler with her. Even if I was engaged at the time, it didn’t make seeing the first man I ever loved with someone else any easier. Hopefully, we’ll be able to put all of this behind us and laugh about it in the future. Or he and Everleigh will rag me for eternity over it.

“Gemma.” Tyler’s voice lowers and sounds huskier as soon as the shower comes on. “That night at your cottage⁠—”

I wasn’t prepared to talk about this right now and wasn’t sure I wanted to, either. “I don’t think Robert knows what happened between us.”

He flashes me a pearly side smile. “I don’t give a fuck if he does. However, I need to clear the air about some things I said afterward that weren’t true, like how it meant nothing to me.”

I swallow hard as my heart races, and the blood drains from my face. Admittedly, that hurt when he said those words to me. “Why’d you lie?”

“I needed to keep you away. Though I didn’t want to, I told myself I had to come to terms with you getting married to someone else, so my only option was to ignore you and keep my distance. It’s why I got a job at the gym and filled my nights with other things to do besides dwell on what it felt like to kiss you again. It’s another reason I was okay with you believing Ruby and I were dating. It was to protect my heart, Gemma. And to protect yours too.”

The words lodge in my throat, and I open my mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. The air between us sizzles, and I’m ready to combust at his admissions. I suck in a deep breath, needing to say something as he stares at me.

“I guess that makes sense. The only reason I said it was a mistake is because I’m not the type of woman who cheats. I’m faithful. Until you came back, I thought I was in love with Robert. Seeing you again peeled back the layers of the fake relationship I had built up in my head, and it exposed too many ugly truths. I was literally having an existential crisis. But the chili was great,” I say, trying to lighten the mood.