Neat (Becker Brothers, #2)(85)

“Maybe he’ll change his mind,” she soothed.

“Maybe. But if he doesn’t, I’ll support him. That’s what he would do for me in the reverse. I should put it on my work calendar now that I’ll be out a couple weeks at the end of summer, just in case he needs help moving.”

Mallory smiled, moving until she was lying on my chest. “You’re a good brother.”

We laid there like that for a while, both of us quiet, until a soft chuckle left her lips.

“What about your other brother? Getting married?”

I smiled. “That wasn’t as much of a surprise. I knew when he first got caught up with that girl that he’d marry her one day.”

“Oh, yeah?” Mallory asked, scooting up to look at me. “How’d you know?”

“He looked at her the way I look at you,” I explained easily, moving her hair away from her face. “Like forever was sitting right there in her eyes.”

Mallory made a gagging notion with her finger, rolling her forever eyes.

I laughed. “What? You don’t like the sweet romance?”

“Not when it’s cheesier than a pizza from Mario’s.”

“You’ll let me cover you in all the romantic cheese I want to,” I said, wrapping her in my arms while she squealed and played like she wanted to get away.

We both knew she didn’t.

“And you’ll like it, too,” I said, kissing her.

She chuckled. “Fine. But when you and I decide to tie the knot, promise me one thing?”

“Anything.”

Mallory grinned. “Let me shove cake in your face.”

I blanched. “But then I’ll have icing all over my face.”

“Mm-hmm,” she agreed, still grinning as she kissed my nose. “And probably all over your tux, too.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Sounds messy.”

“Well, you did agree to let me be the mess in your life,” she reminded me.

And when she leaned in to press her lips to mine again, I held her there, deepening the kiss with a promise that I’d do anything she ever asked.

Because what a beautiful mess she was.





The Becker Brothers will be back this winter.



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Gemma



This is not the conversation we were supposed to have.

On the drive home, I saw every word that would form. I saw how they would be born, first in my mind and then in my mouth, each one standing strong and brave as it slipped from my lips and landed on his ears.

I knew what I’d say. I knew what he’d say. I had a plan.

My particular brand of anxiety was having an ungodly amount of stress over that which I could not control. It’d been this way since I was a young girl, and it’d only worsened with age. I made lists, and plans, and deadlines. I gave myself goals, and when I met them, I celebrated only long enough for me to decide what I would tackle next on the list.

It was all about being in control.

So, unlike a normal woman discovering her husband’s infidelity, I did not cry or scream or throw objects across the room when I learned the truth. No, instead, when I found the first sign of his indiscretions, I made a check list. And I checked items off that list with a mixture of both dread and satisfaction.

Perfume that wasn’t mine staining his shirt? Check.

Text messages from an unknown number, slipping through the cracks of my husband’s technology-ignorant fingers onto our shared computer, but missing from his phone? Check.

Hotel rooms booked on a card I shouldn’t have known about, one I only discovered by receiving the statement in our teal mailbox? Check.

We painted that mailbox together, by the way. It was one of the first things on the list I’d made when we bought our house. We’d both been covered in that teal paint — the color I loved so much in the store, but actually rather hated once it was splashed on our mailbox.

But it didn’t matter the day we painted that mailbox.

On that day, my husband kissed my paint-splattered lips and told me I was the only woman he would ever love.

And I believed him.

My husband was the kind of man who looked at me so adoringly, who said the sweetest things, that I was certain I could have tossed him into a pit of gorgeous super models and he wouldn’t have so much as even looked at them, let alone touch them. In fact, he’d be searching for me, calling out my name, seeking me out.

My entire relationship with him, I’d believed every word he’d said — perhaps blindly, it would seem. I believed him when he cried the day he asked me to marry him, and when he told me over breakfast one morning that no one in this world made me happier than him. There was never any reason to suspect him. There was never any reason to not feel safe.

And yet…

The last little box on the list I made when I first suspected my husband was cheating on me was visual proof. I had the clues, the emails and texts, and late nights with no alibi. But it wasn’t until I followed him, until I saw with my own eyes that his hands could hold another woman the way he held me, that his mouth could kiss hers, that his smile could beam for someone other than me.