Misadventures of a Curvy Girl (Misadventures #18)(51)

I press my face into my hands, tears running out of my eyes like water dribbles from a tap—steadily and without effort. It barely even feels like I’m crying. It barely feels like anything, as if my body has put the act of crying on autopilot as my mind races through the implications of this.

I’ve been stupid.

I’ve been selfish.

I thought people like Lyle Parry were the exception. I thought the little cocoon of sex and domesticity we spun here at the farm could last forever. But I forgot the rules, forgot the lessons that all those cheesy romantic movies had taught me.

There is no forever for girls like me. There is no happily ever after for a curvy girl, and if I try to force it, I’ll only end up hurting Ben and Caleb more. I’ll only end up wrecking their lives. The town will scorn them, just like Lyle did. Ben’s tavern business will wither under the scorch of online mockery, and gentle, sweet Caleb will be torn up from the inside out with every cruel comment that comes our way.

No, this was doomed to fail from the start, and I’m so ashamed it took this long for me to figure it out. I feel greedy and grasping and worse—I feel na?ve.

So fucking na?ve.

With a swallowed sob, I slam the laptop shut.

I know what I have to do. It’s awful and scary and I already hate myself for it, but I’ll hate myself more if I stay, knowing what it will cost Ben and Caleb to love me.

I stand up, wipe the tears from my face, and turn to go upstairs.

And find both men standing in the doorway to the kitchen, watching me with clenched fists and heaving chests.

“Was that him?” Ben asks quietly. “Your ex?”

I don’t even know what to say or what to do, because the humiliation of them hearing Brian’s message blocks every neuron in my brain and every nerve ending in my body. I am living humiliation. I am shame and anger embodied.

I am shaking.

“I’ll kill him,” my normally sweet Caleb vows, his jaw tight under his beard, and something in my chest snaps in half. Gentle Caleb all murderous and Ben looking like a cold, clinical soldier instead of the complicated, sensitive man I know him actually to be—it’s too much. This is breaking them in every possible way. It’s breaking me too, and it has to stop.

“No one talks to you like that,” Caleb seethes, every cord in his neck and forearms standing out. “Fucking no one. We’re going to take care of it, peach, trust me.”

Ben’s gaze is astute, piercing, when it locks on my face. “Don’t believe a word of it,” he orders. “Not a single word of it. He’s bitter, and bitter people will do anything to make someone else feel as shitty as they do.”

“And he’s an asshole,” Caleb adds.

“And he’s an asshole,” Ben concedes, his eyes still pinned on me. “He can’t hurt us, and we won’t let him hurt you. Got it?”

But can’t they see that I’m already hurting? That they will be hurting too? All because we forgot the rules?

“I’m going,” I say. “I’m going back to Kansas City.”

Caleb’s eyes flare green with panic. “No, peach. Don’t say that.”

“I can’t do this!” The words are ripped out of me, right from the gut. I’m crying again. “I can’t do this with you two.”

They flinch at that, and I use their momentary surprise to push past them and go upstairs, throwing all my stuff into my bag once I get there. The toothbrush knocking cutely against theirs on the bathroom counter. The salon shampoo and conditioner perched on the shower ledge. All the lacy, sexy things I bought to please them…and all the lacy, sexy things they bought for me. All the clothes and half-read paperbacks and charging cords and other evidence that I’d been slowly moving in all this time.

It all gets packed up, and when I get downstairs, Caleb and Ben are sitting on the sofa by the front door—Caleb with his head in his hands and Ben in the deliberate pose of a hawk visually tracking prey.

I need to walk to the door now. I need to go. And yet I can’t make my feet move. Can’t force myself to admit this is the end.

“Don’t do this,” Ben says. The sharp cuts of his cheekbones are flooded with color, and in his utter and perfect stillness, the corners of his sensual mouth have gone white. “Don’t let him win.”

“It’s not just him,” I say. “It’s everyone. Everything.”

“But it’s not everyone,” Caleb whispers, looking up at me. “Because the three of us know the truth. That we’re in love and nothing will change that.”

Sweet Caleb. “It’s easy to say that now,” I tell them. “But it won’t be for long.”

“Ireland,” Ben says, and that’s all he needs to say. He packs every feeling, every question, and every plea into those three syllables. I promise myself I’ll hold on to the sound of him saying my name forever.

“It was beautiful, loving you,” I say to them both. “I wish it could have lasted.”

“No.” They say it at the same time, and I take a breath.

“I’m the one saying no now,” I tell them. “This is my limit. I finally found it.” I try bravely to crack a smile. “Goodbye. And please don’t follow me, I have to do this. For all of us.”

I finally make myself take those steps across the room, past two wonderful men who deserve better. And then I walk out the door and out of their lives.