Shine Not Burn(72)

He studiously avoided looking in my direction, acting like he was very busy with adjusting mirrors and checking for traffic. He didn’t respond either.

I had my work cut out for me. Mack was my captive audience, unable to avoid me whether he liked it or not. Now I just had to get him to talk. My heart was pounding and the adrenaline was rushing into my blood stream. Everything in me was telling me to run back home and forget this ever happened, except that one little part of my brain that said we needed to get this over with. Before Bradley showed up. Before my life completely imploded. I was already looking at the nightmare of canceling a wedding and sending back a pile of gifts. Luckily, I had a feeling Ruby wouldn’t mind helping me clean up that part of my mess. She’d probably throw a break-up party in Bradley’s honor. The question I still hadn’t even begun to answer was what I was going to do with myself after it was all over. Something told me life according to Andie’s Lifeplan wasn’t going to be enough anymore.

I did a fake cough to get the ball rolling. “So … we were supposed to meet this morning at nine to talk. I get the feeling you’re avoiding me.” Oh good! Right out of the gate just confront him like that! Smooth move, Ex-Lax Andie. I wanted to slap myself in the forehead for being so confrontational. This was no way to get anywhere with Mack. He was too proud for that. The only reason I was sitting in his truck was because his mother had made him take me.

He pulled out of the parking lot and onto the main street. “I’m not avoiding you. I’m actually doing the opposite, but since you can’t read my mind, I’m not surprised you misunderstood.”

“You could have said something.” I had to hold back the pout that wanted to take over my face. Mack always seemed to have this effect on me where I forgot I was a professional businesswoman who should have been above the sillier emotions like disappointment and bruised feelings.

“You were sleeping, and you’d had a hard day. I decided it would be kinder to leave you there rather than wake you up just to give you a message.”

“I’ll bet you have paper and pen at your house. You could have left me a note.”

“Too impersonal.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “And disappearing without saying anything isn’t?”

A tiny smile snuck out before he could hide it.

I pointed at his face. “What was that?”

“What was what?”

“That smile! I saw you smile, don’t try to hide it. You like this, don’t you?”

“Like what?” He was all innocence.

“Like torturing me, that’s what.” I was grumbling now. I’ve never felt so out of my element and at a disadvantage as I did now. I hated myself for being such a wiener. If we were in the courtroom, I’d have Mack on his knees and the judge shaking his head in pity. But in this truck, wearing his mother’s slippers and my former dorm-wear, I was the one being made a fool of. And the saddest part was, I was doing it to myself.

He said nothing to deny it. His tiny smile slid away to make his expression once more unreadable.

We drove in silence for a while, my stress elevating with every passing mile until I couldn’t take it anymore. “Listen, all joking aside, I have to talk to you. It’s really important.”

“So talk. I’m sitting right here.”

“I really need you to sign those papers.”

“No.”

I huffed out a big breath of frustrated air. I’d been expecting a run-around but not a flat out refusal. Time to change tack … “You don’t love me, Mack.”

“How do you know who I love and who I don’t love?”

“You don’t even know me! How can you possibly love me? That’s just … stupid. Asinine, even.”

He glanced at me, his expression dark. “I know you better than you think I do.” His brows turned down as he focused on the road, and his hands tensed on the wheel.

“Oh, yeah? I doubt it.” No one knew the real me. Not even Bradley. People who said you needed to be yourself when you were with your soulmate didn’t know the real me. If they did, they might change their perspective on that little happy thought. Some things were just better left unsaid, and some pasts are just better left behind.

“Okay, how about this … I know you grew up in the northeast and your father left when you were very young. I know your mother dated a bunch of men who were big partiers, before moving in with one who eventually abused her. I know you feared for your lives for years, and finally convinced your mom to leave him when you were in high school, but that she went back to him right before you started college. I know he almost killed her once and you saw the whole thing happen.” He paused and looked at me for a few seconds. “How am I doing so far?”

My heart-rate went through the roof and my mouth had gone suddenly dry. How could he possibly know all my secrets? Is he a mind reader? Did he do a background check on me?

He continued unraveling my secrets, not waiting for a response from me. “I know you started working on your, uh … lifeplan … I think that’s what you called it, when you were fifteen and have been following it to the letter ever since. Except for that little side-trip you took from it in Las Vegas, everything’s been going according to plan. You’ve only dated guys who fit the mold and want the same things you want, and when they stopped fitting into the plan, you dumped ‘em and found another candidate.”