The Trouble with Love

by Lauren Layne

  So. The holiday should be great.

  “Well, that’ll be fun!” Julie said brightly.

  Emma gave her a look. “It won’t be. But can we just . . . not talk about it? Holidays are supposed to be stressful, right?”

  “But—”

  “Subject change,” Emma pleaded. “Please.”

  “Oooh, I have one!” Grace said, sitting up straighter and directing her attention to the guys at the table. “Hey, Cassidy, is it true that you’re hiring a sports editor?”

  Julie and Emma twisted in their seats to face the men.

  Cassidy squinted at Grace over his whiskey tumbler. “Where’d you hear that?”

  Grace pursed her lips and glanced at Jake. Cassidy gave his employee an annoyed look.

  “Okay, look, it’s like this,” Jake said, setting his glass on the table. “I may have been in your office earlier today, and I may have seen something on your desk that I shouldn’t have. And I may have mentioned it to my pretty wife.”

  “I don’t even know where to start,” Cassidy said.

  “Oh, I do!” Sam said. “I got this. Mr. Malone, son, why were you in Mr. Cassidy’s office?”

  Jake stared at him. “Are you trying to do a principal impersonation?”

  Sam gave him a patient look and Jake squirmed. “You’re good at it. Okay, um, I was in Cassidy’s office because I was looking for something.”

  “Looking for . . .” Sam prodded.

  “Condoms,” Jake said matter-of-factly.

  Julie snorted, but Sam merely gave a sage nod. “You were seeking contraceptives.”

  “Yes, to, um, fornicate with my wife.”

  “Actually,” Emma said, peeking over the top of the couch as she watched the interaction. “One can’t fornicate with one’s wife. Fornication by definition is sexual intercourse with someone you’re not married to.”

  All four men stared at her. “How does she know that?” Jake whispered to Cassidy.

  “Don’t ask me. I didn’t marry her, remember?”

  Emma shot him the finger.

  “Emma’s quite right on the definition,” Mitchell said. “But let’s get to the heart of the story. Jake, did you find the condoms?”

  “That is not the heart of the story,” Cassidy said. “My entire point was—”

  “I did find condoms,” Jake interrupted. “A box actually. A box that had been opened and whose supply had been greatly depleted.”

  Everyone looked at Cassidy awaiting explanation, but Cassidy was not that kind of guy, and he merely took a sip of his whiskey.

  Julie poked Emma in the back. “Office sex,” she whispered. “Nice.”

  “Yes, I’m hiring a sports editor,” Cassidy asked. “It just got approved this afternoon. Everyone happy now?”

  “Not hardly,” Riley said. “I want to go back to how exactly you used all those condoms. How empty was the box, Jake?”

  “Are you going to hire Cole?” Emma interrupted quickly, hoping to avoid a prolonged analysis of exactly how each of those condoms had been used. It was no secret that Emma and Cassidy were sleeping together, but that didn’t mean Emma was dying to spill the details. Even if they were really delicious details.

  “I’d like to hire Cole,” Cassidy said. “But I’ve been trying to hire that guy for a year. He’s been hell-bent on remaining a contractor.”

  “So why not let him stay a contractor?” Sam asked.

  Cassidy shrugged. “Not my call. The order came from above. It comes down to budgeting. Capex versus opex, you know?”

  “No,” everyone said at the same time. Except for Mitchell who said yes.

  Julie sighed and gave her husband a warning look. “You get one sentence to explain.”

  “Capital expenses versus operating expenses,” Mitchell. “Freelance wages are often pulled out of capex funding, so if that’s on short supply, they’ll want to hire an employee, whose salary comes out of opex—”

  “Got it,” Julie said, holding up her hand. “So there might be no more money to pay for Cole as a contractor, but he could work as a full-time employee . . .”

  “If he wants to,” Cassidy said.

  “Yeah, that’ll be the trick,” Jake mused. “That guy hates the idea of settling down in any capacity.”

  Grace snapped her fingers. “That feels so familiar. Why does that feel so familiar?”

  Emma smiled into her wine. Jake had famously had an acute case of wanderlust before finding Grace. Him accusing Cole of not wanting to settle down was a definite case of the pot and kettle being the exact same shade of black.

  Riley chose that moment to let out a huge yawn, which set off an entire chain of yawns, which had Grace looking at the clock.

  “Holy crap. It’s almost one!”

  “On a school night, too!” Sam said, making a scolding noise.

  “Shut it,” Riley said around another yawn. “Not all of us are self-employed.”

  “Maybe our boss will let us come in late tomorrow,” Julie said, fluttering her eyelashes at Cassidy.

  “That’s not going to do it,” Riley said. “Emma, take your shirt off. Then you ask him.”

  “I’m all for this plan,” Cassidy said, “But for the record . . . I’m not your boss anymore, remember? Camille’s back.”

  “Like I could forget,” Grace muttered. “Is anyone else having a hell of a time understanding her newly developed Australian accent?”

  “I asked if she wanted to go grab lunch today, and she actually uttered the phrase shrimp on the barbie,” Julie said, standing and taking her wine glass to the kitchen. “She had to say it, like, eight times before I could understand her.”

  “Hey,” Jake said, punching Cassidy’s arm as he put the cap back on the whiskey. “I know you’re not their boss anymore, but you are mine. Can I come in late tomorrow?”

  Cassidy gave him a dark look, and Jake shot him a finger pistol. “Right on. See you at nine sharp.”

  There was a flurry collecting the last of the dishes, and Riley arguing with Sam that they did too want some of the leftovers. Emma retrieved the pile of winter coats from her bedroom since her coat closet was stacked with boxes she had yet to unpack. Then came hugs and cheek kisses, and a sleepy debate over whether the day before Thanksgiving was a real workday.

  Cassidy made no move to leave with the rest of the group, and nobody questioned it.

  Emma didn’t question it.

  A wave of sleepiness was threatening to knock her over, and she couldn’t wait to crawl beneath the covers and snuggle up to Cassidy. Maybe open the window a crack so the bedroom would get nice and chilly while they stayed warm beneath the covers.

  But one glance at his face told her that he had other ideas.

  And not the sexy kind, either.

  Cassidy was pissed.

  Chapter 27

  “Everything okay?” she asked nervously as she locked the door behind Sam and Riley.

  He ran a hand over his face, looking tired. “Okay, full disclosure that I’m trying really hard not to get mad about this, but I am having a damned difficult time of it, so I need to just say this.”

  “Okay . . .”

  He dropped his hands and looked at her. “Did I hear you right? You’re going to North Carolina for Thanksgiving?”

  “Yes,” she said slowly. “That’s right.”

  “And you’ve known this since Saturday.”

  She shrugged.

  He let out a harsh laugh. “It’s Tuesday, Emma. I’ve been with you almost constantly since Saturday night. Did you forget to mention it?”

  “That’s why you’re mad?” She went to the sink and mechanically began rinsing out wine glasses. “I didn’t think it mattered. You’re headed to Florida to see your parents. It’s not like my trip was going to interfere with your schedule.”

  His hand found her elbow and he pulled her around. “So, what, you weren’t going to tell me at all?”

  She turned off the water with more force than necessary a
nd turned to face him fully, her sleepiness fading as her anger rose.

  “I don’t have to report to you, Cassidy. You’re not my boss anymore, remember?”

  “I’m not talking from a professional place here, Emma, I’m talking about us, as—”

  “As what? Boyfriend and girlfriend? We’re not dating.”

  His aqua eyes flickered in confusion. And something else that was gone before she could name it. “Then what are we doing here, Emma? Fucking?”

  It was her turn to flinch, which put her on the defensive. “What’s this really about? Are you mad that I didn’t tell you I was leaving town for Thanksgiving? Or are you mad about the fact that I’m going to North Carolina to see my father?”

  Cassidy swore softly. “You have to admit, the man hasn’t exactly done great things for our relationship.”

  She rubbed her eyes tiredly.

  “Are you going to tell him that we’re seeing each other?” he asked.

  She glanced at him, and he laughed at the answer he saw on her face. “Right. Of course not.”

  “It’s just . . . it’s complicated, Cassidy. These past couple weeks have been great, but we’ve never dealt with what happened back then, not really.”

  He spread his arms to his sides, his expression confrontational. “Okay then, Emma. Let’s deal with it. Where should we start?”

  She licked her lips. “I don’t want to do this now.”

  He stepped closer. “Have you ever stopped to think there’s nothing to do? That maybe there’s nothing to deal with? We were two idiotic kids who got in an epic fight the day before their wedding and called it off without listening to the other person. Maybe we chalk it up to immaturity.”

  “I listened to you!” Emma said, yelling now. “What was it that I was supposed to hear? That you didn’t know that I existed when my father basically bribed you to ask me out? That you readily agreed only because you thought you’d be getting to date my sister, who was the one you really liked?”

  His face shuttered, and Emma pressed on.

  “I could have gotten over that. I really, really could have. But you can’t blame me for stumbling over the part where you proposed twenty-fours after my father told you he’d only pass his precious company onto family. A company you wanted. Did my father get that part wrong, Cassidy?”

  “Look, the part about Daisy . . . I said it back then, and I’ll say it again: Daisy and I were sort of friends. We had several classes together, she was friends with my ex-girlfriend, we ran in the same circles. I didn’t know her well, but I thought she was cute. Something you should take note of as her identical twin.”

  He stepped closer. “You can’t get mad at me for not falling in love with you before I knew you existed,” he said quietly.

  “But I knew who you were!”

  “The whole school knew who I was,” he snapped. “And, no, that’s not an ego trip. It’s just the way it works when the soccer team is the defending national champ and I was a starter. Okay?”

  “And I was a nobody,” she said.

  “Don’t,” he pointed a finger. “You’re above that little game. Emma, I swear to you that when I asked you out that day in the bookstore, it was because I wanted to. By then I knew that I was asking out Emma. Not Daisy.”

  She tried to go back to washing dishes but he pulled her around again. “Would you just listen to me, damn it! Apparently we do need to talk this out, because you’re obviously not over it.”

  “We did talk it out, and it didn’t do any good! I’ve already heard all this. Next you’ll be trying to tell me that it was only coincidence that you proposed the day after my dad dropped his little bomb. That you’d been planning on it for weeks.”

  “I had been planning it for weeks!”

  “You can’t prove that,” she said quietly.

  “I shouldn’t have to, Emma! Goddamn it, I shouldn’t have had to prove to the woman I was about to marry that I loved her. You were supposed to believe me. You were supposed to know.”

  His voice sounded ravaged and tortured, like the words were torn from the darkest part of him, and Emma wanted to believe him. Desperately.

  But she couldn’t. Because if it wasn’t true she’d risk spending the rest of her days desperately loving someone who didn’t love her back. Not really. For a girl who’d always lived in her sister’s shadow, who’d always been second best, his word wasn’t enough.

  Cassidy watched her face, and then she watched his shoulders slump. “You don’t believe me.”

  “I want to,” she whispered.

  He shook his head. “All this time, I thought our past was about temper more than anything else, but it was more than that, wasn’t it? You didn’t love me enough to trust me.”

  Emma’s heart twisted. In all the times she’d relived that night, it had never occurred to her that she wasn’t the only one who hadn’t felt loved enough.

  She wasn’t blameless in this. She’d always known that, but she hadn’t realized that the damage she’d inflicted on him was just as real as the damage he’d done to her.

  Emma shook her head. “We can’t do this, Cassidy.”

  He shifted closer, his hands closing around her face. “No. No more vague, noncommittal answers. If you don’t want me, you’ll have to say so, straight out. If you don’t want us, you’ll have to say that, too. If you want me to leave, I will. But you have to say the words.”

  Emma made a little whimpering noise and she closed her eyes.

  Then she realized that was exactly the cowardly kind of behavior he was calling her out on, and she forced herself to meet her eyes.

  “Say it, Emma,” he commanded, even as his eyes pleaded otherwise.

  Emma’s hands came up to grasp his wrists.

  Then she did the only thing she could think of that would allow them both to move on from this web of pain they’d snagged themselves back into.

  “I want you to go.” Her words were quiet. But firm.

  He released her as though she’d burned him. Probably because she had.

  He rubbed a hand over his face, looking stunned, before disappearing into the bedroom. He came back with his wool coat.

  “Have fun with your family,” he said, his voice devoid of emotion.

  “You, too,” she said in a monotone drone.

  He reached for the doorknob, then turned back. “One last thing. You’re the one that told me to get lost that night. So I did. But our friends seem to have it in their heads that I somehow left you at the altar. Jake said they have this vision of you standing there on our wedding day, waiting for a groom that never showed up. Why is that? I can understand if you needed to save face, I’ve just . . . wondered. Wondered what happened after I left you in the parking lot that night.”

  Emma crossed her arms and looked at her toes.

  It was time to end this. Once and for all.

  “After . . . our fight, I went home. Daisy drove me. And I climbed into bed and cried for hours, feeling so awfully, horribly bad for myself. I’d spent most of my life feeling like the duller, less sparkly version of my twin, and knowing that you’d thought that, too . . . it was a bit like a knife in the gut, you know? I’d clung so hard to the fact that you’d chosen me, and then there was all this evidence that you’d chosen me for the wrong reasons.”

  He opened his mouth, but shut it just as quickly, letting her finish.

  Emma shook her head and gave a little laugh. “It took me until about two a.m. to come to my senses.”

  She glanced up then. Met his eyes. “I was still hurt. Horribly so. And I was unsure of everything except the fact that I loved you.”

  His eyes flared.

  “I figured that it was one doozy of a fight, but that it would blow over in the morning after a good night’s sleep. . . . I thought you’d forgive me for losing my temper and throwing that ring at you, because we were getting married, Cassidy. I thought it would take more than a southern belle’s fit to break that.”

  “You told
me you never wanted to see me again,” he whispered. “I believed that. You told me to leave. So I did.”

  “I get that,” she said, her voice small. “I understand. But I thought you’d come back. I was so sure of it. It’s why I got up the next morning and let Daisy put cucumbers on my eyes to reduce the puffiness, and let the makeup artist apply a thick mask of foundation to disguise my red nose and blotchy cheeks. I thought you’d come back,” her voice broke.

  “Emma.” He reached out a hand, but she stepped back.

  “I waited until an hour after the ceremony was supposed to have ended. I waited even after all the guests left. I waited until Daisy wrapped me in a huge fleece blanket and literally dragged me into Daddy’s car.”

  “I didn’t know,” he whispered.

  Her laugh was small. “Which part was unclear? The sobbing voice mails? The dozens of crazed text messages?”

  Cassidy’s eyes closed. “You called me.”

  “Like a hundred times.” She hugged herself, lost in her own world of wretched memories. “I begged, Cassidy. I’m not letting you off the hook for using me to wiggle into my father’s company, but I didn’t let myself off the hook, either. I apologized over and over, and I would have done so in person, but you didn’t even give me that chance. That is not the action of a man in love.” She shrugged. “So I did what I had to do. I fell out of love with you.”

  Or at least I tried.

  He swallowed.

  “And I can’t go back,” she said with a small smile. “I’m not doing that again. If you care at all, let me go. Please. Let me heal.”

  He stared at her for several painful seconds. Then he moved toward her, smiling sadly when she flinched. His head dipped to hers; his lips brushed her cheek, softly. Sweetly.

  “This isn’t over, Emma.”

  Then he was gone.

  Emma told herself that she was glad. This what she wanted—that being by herself was safe.

  But she didn’t feel safe.

  She felt lonely. Painfully, heartbreakingly alone.

  And then she did what she should have done a long, long time ago.

  She curled up on her bed and cried.