The Wedding Party (The Wedding Date, #3)(79)

“You think I’m just some superficial bitch?” she asked again. “Really?”

Okay, he had to explain why he’d said that to Ben. But he couldn’t tell her what Ben had said, about how he was clearly falling in love with her.

A joke. He should turn it into a joke.

“Sometimes you sure as hell seem like it,” he said. “Hell, you seemed more upset that my clothes got ruined than about anything else that happened yesterday.”

That didn’t come out like he’d meant it as a joke. Shit. He opened his mouth to try again, but Maddie jumped in before he could.

“After everything we talked about, after everything I told you, and that’s what you think of me?”

He couldn’t tell her what he really thought of her, or how he really felt about her. It was enough that Ben had figured it out. Her words and actions for the past few months had told him she didn’t feel the same way. He had too much pride to let her ever know how he felt.

All of his anger, at Maddie and at himself for caring so much about her, came pouring out.

“We all know what matters and what doesn’t matter to you. You’ll hold my hand alone in the hospital, you’ll come over to my apartment anytime, but as soon as anyone else is around, you jump back. It’s clear Maddie Forest has a rep to uphold, and I’m not good enough for her. Why bother to pretend otherwise?”

Theo knew he shouldn’t be saying any of this to her, that he was angry and lashing out, but he couldn’t stop himself.

She looked at him like her face was made of stone.

“Why would someone like you ever be good enough for me? Someone like you, who hides in corners at parties, bores a crowd to tears at the drop of a hat, only dances alone, doesn’t listen to anything but the sound of his own voice. Why do you think I wanted to keep this a secret? You don’t think I’d want anyone to know I was sleeping with you, do you?”

That had maybe been an even harder hit than the one that had knocked him out the day before.

Maddie opened the pizza box. Shit. She’d gotten him roasted garlic pizza. It smelled so good.

“When I first met you, I thought you were the biggest asshole I’d ever met. I sure as hell was right about that.”

She turned the pizza box over, and the entire pizza dropped facedown onto the floor.

“Do me a favor, Theo.”

She dropped the box on top of the pizza.

“Never speak to me again.”

She turned and walked out. This time, she didn’t even slam the door.

Maddie’s hands shook so much she could barely get her key in the ignition. She couldn’t sit here in her car; she didn’t want Theo or his brother to see how upset she was. She took a deep breath to help pull herself together, turned the key to start the car, and drove away as fast as she could.

How could he say something like that about her? How could he even think something like that about her? She thought he knew her.

She’d thought he’d seen her for who she really was, not just what she looked like or the Maddie she showed to the world, but the person she was inside. She’d thought he’d seen the real Maddie, and liked her, cheered for her, believed in her. But in the end, he was just who she’d thought he’d been in the first place: the kind of guy who would judge her for what she looked like and what she dressed like and would never bother to get to know the real person underneath.

She’d told him so much. About her struggles, about her goals for herself, about why she was the person she was. Had he ever listened to her? Or had he just been waiting for his turn to talk?

She’d known their relationship was too good to be true, she’d known no actual relationships were that comfortable and easy, she’d known they were heading for a bad ending. She’d been right all along.

That didn’t make her feel any better.

She looked around and realized where she was; she’d driven straight to Alexa’s house.

She shook her head and made a U-turn in the middle of the street to go back home. She couldn’t tell Alexa about any of this, especially not now.

She walked into her unnaturally clean house and dropped her bags on the floor. She’d been keeping her house as clean as it was humanly possible for her to keep it ever since Theo had come over that first time. He’d been coming over often enough since then that it just made sense for her to clean up on a regular basis instead of cleaning in a frenzy whenever they had plans.

It was time for this nonsense to end.

She raced around her house, reverse cleaning. She knocked books off shelves, threw clothes out of the hamper and out of the dresser and onto the floor, tossed shopping bags from their hiding place in her bathroom closet to the middle of her living room, kicked empty boxes out of the recycling pile. Finally, she spun around in a circle to admire her handiwork and smiled.

And then she sat down in the middle of her living room floor, surrounded by all of her stuff, and sobbed.





Chapter Nineteen




THEO SHUT OFF THE PODCAST IN THE MIDDLE OF A SENTENCE. IF HE listened to one more fucking podcast, he might go wander the streets of Berkeley and yell in the ear of anyone who could listen about mattresses and food delivery boxes and razor delivery clubs and all the other stuff that every damn podcast advertised and he was now almost convinced he needed.