Or was it second cousin? The whole familial thing got complicated to me after a generation or two.
Point was, I wasn’t buying it. And not just because I didn’t want to.
“Are you sure that he wasn’t just giving her advice during her presentation? Henry’s his cousin and all.”
“Cousin once removed.” Oh, that was it. Leave it to Silvia to feel the need to correct me. “And no. Definitely not. The expressions they were exchanging did not say ‘business.’”
I still didn’t buy it.
Except, I also did.
I’d been learning Brett wasn’t exactly the man I’d thought he was. I’d never have thought he’d let a woman give him a BJ at work in a non-private room, and yet that had happened. I’d never thought he would be the kind of guy to declare his love and then run away, and yet that had happened too.
My chest suddenly hurt.
Without excusing myself, I turned back toward the conference room. Brett hadn’t walked out yet, and if this was why—if she was why he’d needed time—we needed to have words. Why hadn’t he admitted it when I’d asked? Was yet another Sebastian gaslighting and stringing me along?
I caught the door as someone else walked through and stopped in the threshold when I saw Brett was already engaged in a conversation. With Tess. Otherwise alone.
My mouth fell open, and then I forced myself to be very, very still so I could make out their conversation from several feet away.
“Tess…” he said, with a weight in her name that wouldn’t be there if this was a professional conversation.
She turned to him. “What? He’s a player. I got it. I’ll try to make sure I don’t smile at him again.”
“I’m serious here. He’s got a reputation for stringing girls along, even when he knows that they’re misinterpreting his actions.”
Scott.
They were talking about Scott.
Brett was warning her about him. And he’d spent last Saturday with her—a fact he and I had never gotten around to discussing. It was one thing to have a passing interest in her, but anyone with a head would take those facts and extrapolate the same conclusion: He wasn’t just interested. He was trying to win her.
As Silvia would have said, Isn’t it totally obvious?
No wonder he had to think about us.
Quietly, I stepped back out of the room and shut the door behind me. In the hall, I tried to steady my breathing, hoping it would relieve the ache of each lift and fall of my chest. Familiar refrains repeated in my head:
This is fine.
At least I’m in consideration.
A not completely interested man is kind of my brand.
Sit on the sidelines and take what I could get. That’s what I’d done with Scott and countless assholes before him.
The thing was...
The thing was Brett was not my usual brand, and a new kind of man deserved a new kind of approach. And if it were some other guy I was pining over, what would Brett tell me to do? Stand up for myself. Refuse to settle.
Propelled by something I couldn’t identify, I marched to Brett’s office. “Just grabbing something for him,” I said to Julie, his assistant, before letting myself in.
Then I faced the door, leaned against the door, and waited.
And waited.
And prayed to God that the reason he hadn’t returned yet wasn’t because Tess was on her knees in front of him in the conference room.
And I waited some more.
Finally, I heard Julie outside the office. “Eden’s still in there.”
“Eden?” He pushed through the door, not staying for her to answer, asking me the question instead with his expression.
I didn’t give him a chance to wonder. “You made me think it wasn’t about Tess.”
He raised a confused eyebrow as he pulled the door shut behind him. “What wasn’t about Tess?”
“You said you needed time to think, and when I asked if it was about Tess, you didn’t answer, but you very explicitly gave me the impression that it wasn’t. But then...you and her...you just expect me to wait around while she makes up her mind?”
“Makes up her mind a—”
But I was on a roll. “Because I’ve always waited around for men in the past? So you thought, ‘Oh, sure. Eden will be there whenever.’”
“Hold up. I have never—”
“Were you just going to keep putting me off until you knew for sure if things worked out with her and Scott? And if it did, then...what? Then you come back and say we’re all good? So I’m not even supposed to care that I’m your second choice?”
“Are you fucking kidding me? My ‘second choice’?” It was a roar. A lion roar. Shaking the air and stealing whatever I’d been meaning to say next. “Do you even hear yourself? I’m your second choice!”
“What?” The accusation baffled me, but mostly I was confused about his demeanor. I’d seen Brett mad, but I’d rarely seen him so explosive. I had never seen him explode at me.
“Don’t be like that. Don’t play like I haven’t spent the last year comforting you over Scott.”
“Sure, but—” I no longer had control of the conversation, and he ran over me this time.
“Before that, who was it? Rufus. And before him, Erik. And before him…the French guy…”
“Michel,” I said softly.
“Right! Not even your second choice, am I? Your tenth? Fifteenth?”
Okay. That was a lot of guys over the years. I gave a weak smile. “Am I being slut shamed right now?”
My attempt at humor didn’t put a dent in his cloak of anger. “Then you have the nerve to accuse me of making you my second choice? For fuck’s sake, Edie...I have waited for you and waited and waited. Waited while you let asshole after asshole walk all over you.”
“You could have…” Could have what? Told me that I was making a mistake? He’d done that, every time. Told me I was worth more? He’d done that too. Stopped caring about me?
He’d never done that. I’d known he wouldn’t, no matter how frustrated he got with me.
...And I was starting to see the point.
“Oh,” I said, softly, a squeezing type of pressure building around my chest.
“Exactly. Then you fell for, of all people, Scott.”
“I didn’t…” But I did. I had. Everything he said. It was all true.
He took a step toward me, but with my shame and his wrath still clearly etched in his features, it was impossible not to shrink back. “Yes, I’m in love with you, Eden, and I guess I can’t blame you for returning to the guys who bring you pain, because I kept going back to you. Even though it hurt to listen to your heartache, I swallowed my feelings. I let myself be hurt over and over. You want to know why I really needed time to think if we made sense? Because I already know the answer. And I wanted it to be a different answer, but I know from experience that it won’t be.”
“No.” I couldn’t let him say it. “No. No.”
“Because even though you’re choosing me now, you didn’t ever choose me then.” His words were softer, which somehow made them punch harder. “And that matters. I’ve accepted my place as a Lesser Sebastian, but I value myself too much to be someone’s second choice. I can’t do that to myself. Not even for you.”