Raw Deal (Larson Brothers #1)(51)
“I’d better get you back,” he murmured into her hair, his fist clenching in it as if the thought was unbearable for him. And she knew he was right, that Rowan would probably never forgive her for staying the night with him, but it was unbearable for her too.
“I know,” she said softly. And not all of her tears after that were for her brother. More than a few were for Michael, and for herself.
Savannah opened the hotel door to Rowan’s furious green eyes and crossed arms.
“You slept with him.”
The accusation cut right to the heart, as Savannah had known it would. She maintained her silence, her mouth tightening, and turned to retrieve her carry-on bag from the bed.
Rowan chased after her. “My God! What are you thinking? After all that lecturing me about Zane, and you run off and screw the reason for this entire mess?”
Savannah calmly extended the handle on her suitcase and glanced around the room before turning back to Rowan with a deep inhale. “I did not say that I slept with him, and I don’t appreciate that.”
“Why else were you out so late?”
“I don’t know, talking? Don’t you think we would have a lot to talk about?”
“Like what? Did you find out why he would keep going after Tommy after the ref called the fight? I’d really like to know.”
“No, I didn’t, because I know he didn’t mean to hurt him. I believe it down to my soul.”
“What he meant doesn’t matter.” Rowan’s eyes brimmed with tears. “It still happened. I don’t know how you can look at him. Forgive him if you absolutely have to, for whatever reason, and let it f*cking go!”
Savannah’s mouth worked soundlessly for a moment. “Ro, I asked you—”
“No. You asked about dinner. Dinner. And then we would go home today and nothing would ever come of it, like you said. I could’ve accepted that. But this . . .” She put both hands to her head as if such insanity was beyond her comprehension. “Savannah! Your poor parents!”
“Okay, I love you, and you’ve come close a few times but you’re now crossing the line to hysterical, and that is not good for the baby. This is nothing my parents need to know about, and there’s no reason to think what I said won’t still happen. We’re going home. All right? Nothing has changed.” A deception, again. She nearly cringed when it fell from her lips, starting the cycle all over. Everything had changed.
Mike had brought her back to the hotel around three, and even then, they’d clung to each other for a good half hour in his truck, and she’d had to make him vow not to show up today at the airport to see her off. It wouldn’t surprise her if he came anyway, or if she was picking him up in New Orleans next weekend after a flight of his own.
Which would be just fine with her, because she already missed him. The last look they had shared before she closed the door and watched him drive away had torn her to pieces.
“You can have any man you want, Savannah,” Rowan said sadly after a moment of painful silence while she tried to get a grip on her emotions. She swept an arm down in Savannah’s general direction. “I mean, look at you. Anyone you want. Why him? Why the one who took Tommy away from us?”
In her emotionally raw state, Savannah couldn’t resist the tears that sprang to her own eyes at the raw pain in Rowan’s voice, in her face. “I didn’t plan on any of this.”
“Then you can stop it. Okay? Just stop it. You have to.”
Maybe Mike’s idea of running away had been a good one. It would be the only way either of them would find any peace together.
Savannah didn’t know what to say. She wouldn’t cheapen what she and Mike had shared all weekend by vowing to end it when she knew she wouldn’t—couldn’t. He didn’t deserve that. But neither could she bring herself to lie to Rowan anymore, either.
“You won’t, though, will you?” Rowan asked. “I see it all over your face.”
“Please let us give it a chance,” she said, finding it ridiculous, as a grown woman, to beg someone else to let her have the relationship she wanted. “Just a chance. Maybe it won’t work. Maybe it will. If it does, we’ll do everything we can to make it right. I know he wants to.”
“The only way he can make this right is to stay out of our lives. If you were thinking straight, you would know that.”
“He made this weekend possible for you. Meeting Zane and—”
“And I wouldn’t have accepted if I’d known that you’d f*ck him for it.”
Pain ripped through Savannah’s chest with a force that made her stagger backward a step, momentarily unable to speak around it. “You’d better stop, Rowan, before you say something you regret.”
“Too late. I already regret everything.” She turned and stalked toward the door as Savannah fought with raging anger and hurt, but Rowan turned for one final word before slamming her way out. “Don’t you dare ever try to tell me you love me again if you do this. Never.”
The closing door echoed through the room, leaving Savannah standing alone, staring at it long after her sister-in-law was gone. And then the phone was in her hand and Michael’s voice in her ear almost before she knew she’d moved.
“What’s the matter?” he demanded the second he heard her voice, the sobs ripping from her throat.