Chapter 5
COURTNEY
“I’m so sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking. Beckett is your cousin. He’ll hate you for the way I just taunted him.”
Bea scoffed out a half laugh at my pseudo apology.
“No offense, Courtney, but Beckett only has himself to blame for this whole situation. Seems to me, after what we just heard, that he was looking for any excuse. He might not have cheated physically, but he was already planning to before he pushed you off on Flynn. If you had refused and gone through with the wedding to him, he would have cheated or called it off.”
“Why? I don’t understand. I have dedicated my whole life to loving that man, and he behaved like he couldn’t wait to get rid of me.” Flynn pulled me into his arms and held me there as I cried in the parking lot.
“Let’s get you out of here,” He murmured in my ear. “You don’t need all the busybodies to see you break down over my asshole cousin.”
“We’ll follow you,” Bea stated as she handed her car keys to Flynn. “I assume the asshat brought you here.” When Flynn nodded and took her keys, she told him, “I’ll ride with Ky.”
Flynn helped me into Bea’s passenger seat and then moved around the car to get in on the other side. I stared at the door of the bar. He didn’t even bother to come out and check on me, to follow us, to deny anything, to try to make things right. Beckett didn’t bother to fight for me. He was too busy with the two - TWO - women he had fighting over him in the bar. My heart hammered in my chest as I thought about the fact that he had started talking to at least one of them before he offered me up to marry another man. Even when he did that, I didn’t think it meant we were broken up. I thought it meant that our marriage was on hold, not our relationship. That’s what I got for thinking instead of questioning everything, I supposed.
“I know this is a dumb question, but I feel like I have to ask anyway, are you okay?”
I turned to see Flynn’s concerned eyes on me. I offered him a hint of smile before I dropped my eyes to where my hands rested on my lap. “No. I don’t know if I’ll ever be okay after this. I thought it was just about the money and that stupid cabin. Turns out, it was about him seeing other people all along.”
“I’m guessing by what you said back there that he never even bothered to actually break it off with you.”
“No, he didn’t. I honestly thought this,” I waved my hand back and forth between us, “was all for show and that he and I were still a couple.” I swiped a hand down my face, as if I could wipe everything I saw from my mind. That was impossible. “I don’t know why I thought that.”
“Because he never told you otherwise. I think any sane person would have assumed that nothing changed about your relationship.”
“Any sane person wouldn’t have offered me up to marry his cousin for money that we didn’t need.”
“Well, this is Beckett we’re talking about,” Flynn teased. “Sorry, not the time for jokes.”
“No, it is because everything feels like a bad joke, only someone forgot to tell me the punchline so I can laugh about it.”
We were quiet for most of the ride back to his house. It was only when we pulled into his driveway that I realized that was where we had been headed the whole time. “I thought you were taking me home?”
Flynn shrugged his shoulders as he got out of the car. Once he was at my door, he opened it and held his hand out to me. I took it, despite being confused about why we were there. “My cousin has a key to your place, right?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you might want to be somewhere he couldn’t get into easily, at least for the night.”
“Thanks, I hadn’t thought about that.” I didn’t bother to add the fact that I didn’t think Beckett cared enough about me to come to my house anyway. He was too busy juggling his other women to care about how heartbroken I was. My house was actually a guest cottage on my parents’ property. When they bought the place, the cottage was originally supposed to be my mom’s art studio, since she was a painter and sculptor too. Unfortunately, arthritis and other health issues hit her too hard to continue. When I came home from college, my parents offered the cottage to me, so that I could save for my wedding, honeymoon, and a home that Beckett and I could start a family in.
They had even suggested that they would be okay with Beckett moving in too, so that he could also save for those things. My parents were very traditional, so to make that concession had been a stretch for them. Beckett declined their offer, saying he wanted to do everything with me the right way. It made my parents respect him more. In hindsight, it made me wonder how long he had been plotting his freedom. Why couldn’t he have spoken up sooner? It would have saved me a ton of money on a wedding. Even if I wanted to help Flynn out, we could have had a quickie marriage at the Justice of the Peace and been done with it for less than two hundred dollars.
I followed Flynn into his house. It was a beautiful space with a huge backyard and a sunroom to die for. As an artist, I could spend all day in that room, or out in the yard, painting. I wasn’t sure why he chose the house, since he had been a serious bachelor as long as I’d known him and his house was made for a family. In fact, when Beckett and I discussed what kind of home we wanted to buy in our future, I told him I wanted one exactly like Flynn’s.
“I’ve always loved it here,” I murmured.
“Yeah?” Flynn asked as he turned to close and lock the door behind us.
“It’s the perfect home to raise a family.” I blushed profusely as I realized that it might sound like more than what I meant.
“That’s why I bought it.”
I turned to look at him. “I don’t understand. You haven’t even dated anyone seriously.”
“No, I haven’t. That doesn’t mean I didn’t think about my future when I bought this place. I wanted a nice piece of property and a good home for whenever the time came to be serious.”
“And you don’t think your future wife and mother of your children will care that it was once the bachelor pad you brought all your women to?” I asked and immediately wished I wouldn’t have when the tips of Flynn’s ears turned red and he ducked his head in what could only be embarrassment.
“I guess I hadn’t thought about that,” He mumbled.
“I’m sorry. I have no room to judge anyone. I’m marrying my former fiancé’s cousin. At this point, I’m doing it to spite him. I’m sure one day, if I ever date again, I’ll have to explain that, and Lord knows, I’ll sound like a crazy woman.” I chuckled. “Maybe we’ll need to stay married to one another, Flynn. I’m not sure anyone else would have us.” I winked at him to let him know I was kidding, but his grin said something different. Again, I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to think too deeply on it until he spoke.
“I don’t think that would be a bad thing, Court.”
“Oh!” It was the only response I was capable of as Flynn’s ears burned hot again before he turned to head to his kitchen. I followed behind as my brain tried to process and finally gave up because I was too overwhelmed to consider living a life with my former fiancé’s cousin.
“Can I get you anything?” Flynn offered.
“I’ll take water.”
Flynn’s brows rose in question, or maybe shock, as he turned to grab a glass out of the cabinet. “Figured you would want something stronger after the bar.”
I shook my head. “Nope. If I hit the strong stuff, I’m not sure I’d come back up for a while and I need to be sober to marry you this weekend.”
Flynn put the glass down on the counter and moved to stand in front of me. “Courtney, I appreciate your willingness to do this, even if you thought you wouldn’t have to follow through. I won’t hold you to it, though. I would never force you to marry me.”
“You aren’t forcing me.”
“No, but I’d rather your only reason for doing this not be to spite Beckett.”
“You don’t think he deserves it?”
“Oh, no. I think he deserves far worse, because it won’t hurt him until much later. He thinks you’re safe with me.”
“Aren’t I?”
Flynn leaned in closer and the smile that spread across his face was nearly my undoing. “You will always be safe with me, Courtney, but the safety Beckett thinks about is entirely different.”
“What do you mean?” I managed to choke past my suddenly dry throat.
“He thinks you’re safe from me wanting you, from pushing physical boundaries only he thinks should remain in place.”
“And you don’t see it like that?”
He shook his head slowly from side-to-side. “Nope.”
“Nope,” I whispered, though I wasn’t sure if it was a question or what.
“Nope. I don’t see it like that at all. If you marry me, and you give me even the tiniest hint that you might be interested in more than a marriage in name only, there’s not a damn thing to stop me from having more with you.” He leaned in a little further and placed a quick kiss on my cheek, but it was close enough that he caught the corner of my mouth too. His green eyes twinkled in delight at my shocked expression as he pulled back. Then, before I could read anything into the situation, he turned and moved back to the glass he placed on the counter. He filled the damn thing up, as if he hadn’t left me standing there in a Flynn Fog, and handed it to me. His sturdy hand made my quivering one seem to shake harder.
Could I go there with Flynn?
I wasn’t sure if it was a smart idea, but the zing of electric energy between us made me think maybe it wasn’t completely out of the realm of possibility though. Then again, that could have been my spiteful revenge rearing its ugly head. Flynn was right, Beckett assumed I was safe with his cousin. I was beginning to think he might have been wrong.