Redneck Romeo (Rough Riders #15)(8)

Now when she finally had the chance to ask him the question that’d kept her up at night for months, her lips seemed glued shut.


“Come on, Rory. I know you’ve got something to say to me.”


“Why?” she asked him quietly.


“Why what? Why did I walk away from her?”


“No. Why did you ask her to marry you in the first place?”


He picked up a rock and chucked it into the water. “Wasn’t that what I was supposed to do? Time to settle down, they said. Time to grow up, they said. So half of my family was lookin’ at me like I was a defective human because no woman would stay with me longer than a couple of weeks. The other half of my family was lookin’ at my single status as an affront to their family values. Like I was clinging too hard to the wild McKay reputations they’d built over the years. Since they were all done with it, I should be too. Bear in mind many of them didn’t get married and settle down until they were well into their thirties.”


“Were either of the McKay camps right?”


Dalton shrugged. “No. I’m not…some smooth operator like most of them.” He shot her a sheepish look. “As you know firsthand. After Tell and Georgia got together, I was the odd man out everywhere. Spending time alone…never really been my thing. I always had my brothers or my cousins around. And without sounding like this is a f*cking pity party, I may as well have been a ghost. So I spent a lot of time on the road, learning to be by myself, doin’ what I wanted to do. Then last summer after you went to South America, Addie and I ended up shooting pool at the Golden Boot. Shocked the shit outta me that she didn’t hate me.”


“Why? Addie doesn’t hate anyone.”


He raised a dark eyebrow. “I assumed you’d told her about us?”


Rory shook her head.


“I never mentioned those, ah, incidents either when she and I started hanging out. She’s a sweet woman, nice to the core, everyone in town loves her and after three months of dating, she told me that she loved me.”


Rory clenched her jaw to keep it shut.


“You know what’s pathetic? I was so desperate at that point in my life for someone to profess their love for me that I proposed to her. She said yes and I figured we’d make a good life together.”


“Did you ever love her?”


“Thought I did, until…”


“Until what?”


He opened his mouth. Closed it. Picked up another rock and threw it.


Pushing was her way, but this time, she didn’t push. Part of her was afraid to hear him voice her suspicions out loud.


“So we set the wedding date. Everyone was happy.”


Were you happy?


“Addie focused her worries on the flavor of the cake and the color and monogramming on the napkins. I kept a lid on my worries. I convinced myself it was nerves. All men get screwed up thinkin’ about becoming a husband, and a provider, and only bein’ with one woman for the rest of his life.”


“You didn’t talk to your brothers, your cousins, your friends—anybody—about this since they’d gone through it?”


“No.” Then he went quiet.


“That’s it? That’s all I get about how you decided to leave my best friend standing alone in front of a church full of people?”


“I can’t…”


“You can’t? You won’t is more like it,” she spat.


“You wanna know why? I’ll tell you. But you answer this first. How did you react when you found out Addie and I were getting married?”


Sick to my stomach. Jealous. Mad. She tossed out a cool, “I was all right with it.”


Dalton met her gaze head on. “Bullshit. I’m bein’ honest with you, at least have the goddamn balls to be the same with me.”


“Fine. I was upset, okay? You and Addie aren’t a good match. But how could I say that to her? How could I be negative, without giving our stupid past history as the reason for my negativity? Especially when she immediately asked me to be her maid of honor? I had to suck it up, McKay. Act like I was happy for her.”



Those blue eyes turned shrewd. “But you weren’t happy. Addie and I weren’t a good match…why? Because she’s too good for me?”


“Fuck that. You two only ended up together because you were both lonely and wanted to end that loneliness. She’d felt that way a lot longer than you. She wanted to be a wife and a mother more than anything in the world. You offered it to her so she took it.” Immediately Rory regretted blurting that out. “Sorry.”


“Sorry because it’s true?”


“Maybe.” Rory exhaled. “Look, you should’ve been honest with her when you started having doubts.”


Dalton laughed. A little hysterically.


“What?”


“Nothin’.”


“You insisted on this honesty thing, you damn well better stick to it.”


His blue eyes were fierce when he got in her face. “I had worries, not doubts, certainly not flat-out what the f*ck am I doin’ thoughts prior to putting on my tuxedo last Saturday morning. I didn’t feel that doubt, that absolute wrongness of standing in front of a minister, about to promise my devotion and my life to the wrong woman until…”