The Wedding Party (The Wedding Date, #3)(78)

Had Maddie just been pretending all summer when he’d talked to her about the rally and why it was so important to him? He’d thought she cared. About the campaign, and about him.

From the way she’d acted this morning, it seemed like she couldn’t wait to be done with him.

He realized on his way back into the living room that he was hungry again. The last thing he wanted was more soup, but Ben probably wouldn’t let him eat anything else.

“What’s the least gross of the soups you brought me?” Theo asked. “Maddie made me eat . . . what’s it called? . . . the noodle one. I can’t wait to eat real food again.”

Ben turned off the TV and stood up.

“I can’t believe you ate chicken noodle soup. I’ll heat you up something else. I know better than to let you walk down that hallway holding a bowl.”

“Hey, I can walk almost normally now!” he shouted after Ben. Wait. He didn’t know why he was arguing this. His little brother was waiting on him; he needed to enjoy this as long as it lasted.

After not too long, Ben came back with a bowl of some hot yellowish liquid and another box of crackers. He sat down next to Theo on the couch and plunked the bowl in front of him. Theo looked at it and sighed. At least he’d brought more crackers.

“Here.” Ben handed Theo a spoon. “Eat. I promise it’s not terrible.”

Theo broke open the crackers, dipped one into the soup, and sniffed it.

“Concussions are the worst,” he said. He bit into the cracker and shrugged, then took a few cautious bites of the soup. It tasted better than he’d expected, but he wanted food he could chew. The doctor had probably told them previously when he would be safe from yesterday’s nausea, but he barely remembered anything the doctor had said. And Maddie wasn’t here to tell him.

“Did the doctor say anything about when I can go back to normal food?” he asked Ben. Ben shrugged, like Theo knew he would.

“Maddie will know. You can ask her if she comes back tonight.”

It wasn’t until Ben said “if” that Theo had even considered the possibility of Maddie not coming home tonight. What if she’d been so sick of taking care of him she decided to stay at her house? What if she fell asleep and slept until morning?

He pushed back the panic that had risen in his chest. Maybe she’d finally realized what an obsessive stress case he was at all times, and had taken the opportunity when Ben had arrived to flee forever.

It would be fine. He would be fine. He could take care of himself. He’d survived this long without Maddie; he could survive this without her.

He turned to Ben to tell him to find that concussion fact sheet or whatever, and found Ben staring at him with a big smile on his face.

“Freaked out at the idea of her not coming back, huh? What’s going on between you and Maddie anyway? From what you told me, I thought she was just some girl you were fucking. But then I got to the hospital yesterday and she was ordering everyone around like she was in charge. Hell, I let her order me around, because it seemed like she was in charge. That’s how girlfriends act, dude.”

Shit. He did not need Ben going around calling Maddie his girlfriend. He opened his mouth to deny it, but Ben just kept talking.

“You’re obviously in love with her. Any asshole can see that in the way you look at her.” Ben grinned. “I approve. And not just because she’s so hot, but that helps. She has sister-in-law material written all over her.”

Oh no. Now Ben was the one who was all excited and talking about how he and Maddie were meant to be together, the thing Maddie always said Alexa would be the one to do, the reason why she was so intent on keeping them a secret.

But that probably wasn’t the real reason she didn’t want to tell Alexa about them. It was probably that she always knew he was too uptight, too anxious, too dull for her.

He couldn’t handle the idea of Ben knowing what Maddie really thought of him. Or of Ben knowing how hard he’d fallen for Maddie, while she was just counting the days until the wedding so she’d be done with him.

He needed to disabuse Ben of the notion that Maddie was his girlfriend, or Ben’s future sister-in-law, or that Theo had fallen in love with her. Immediately.

It might help to disabuse himself of that notion at the same time.

“Look, Maddie’s cool, but there’s no there there. When I first met her, I thought she was just some superficial, bitchy hot girl, who only cared about status and looks and money, and didn’t care about anything important. She’s still that same shallow person I thought she was, no matter how long she stayed at the hospital yesterday.”

The front door slammed.

“Oh really?” Maddie appeared in the doorway. “I’m just some superficial bitch?”

Note to self: next time he was giving his brother some bullshit reasons why he wasn’t falling for someone, make sure it was in a place the someone didn’t have the key to.

He stood up to face her. She had a pizza box in her hands and looked beautiful and well rested and furious.

Had she heard what Ben had said, about how he was obviously falling in love with her? Part of him hoped she had; maybe it would make her less mad about what she’d just heard. But another part really hoped she hadn’t. He knew what her response to that would be.

Ben got up and slipped out of the room. He wanted to shout after his brother to stay here with him, but instead he watched him go.