Sunday’s Best

Chapter 1

One

Hey girly… I thought you’d want to know your boyfriend has been sleeping with girls behind your back. I had no idea he had a girlfriend when I met him last weekend. So sorry to be the one to tell you.

“You really think I’d do that to you?” Logan shakes his head in a way that looks rehearsed. “This girl is embarrassed and pissed that I turned her down. She’s obsessed with me—kept following me around all weekend.”

“She didn’t sound obsessed…”

“Of course she didn’t.” His hand wraps around the back of his neck, and he lets out an exasperated huff. “You think she’d admit she’s desperate? You really believe she didn’t know I have a girlfriend? Half the guys I hang around with have met you.”

I glance down at the phone clasped tight in my hand, the screen now black but the message etched on the inside of my skull. She seemed genuinely apologetic, but then again, it can be hard to read tone over text.

The saliva pooled in the back of my throat scorches on the way down. “I don’t know what I believe.”

Logan’s lip curls. “Maybe try believing your boyfriend instead of some random buckle bunny. Like… use your fucking head”—he stabs at his temple with his middle finger—“and think about how she found you. Maybe it’s because I was fucking talking about you.”

My tear-soaked cheeks burn from the salt and the heat of embarrassment, and I tug the sleeve of my sweatshirt down over my hand before using it as a makeshift handkerchief. The sniffle that follows echoes through the small living room in our rental house.

“And now she got exactly what she wanted. You sitting here crying over her.”

“It’s not about her. It’s the fact that someone reached out, period.”

“Because she wants me,” he fires back instantly, venom dripping from his words. “She wants what you have, and the second she realized she couldn’t get it, she found you and started poking at the fucking insecurities she hoped were there. And look at that, she was right.”

Heat floods my face.

“That’s not fair…” I whisper.

“What’s not fair is the way you’re letting some random girl get between us.

You think this is the only girl who’s tried this shit?

Every single one of them knows I have a girlfriend.

I make that clear.” His tongue slips across his lips, leaving a glistening sneer in its wake.

He studies me as if I’m made of porcelain and he wants to watch me shatter.

“If I wanted any of them, I could have them. That girl from the message included. But I’m with you, and you still don’t believe me. ”

I feel the color drain from my face. I regret bringing this up tonight… or ever.

When Logan asked me out a year ago, I knew I was the luckiest girl in the world. So many women looked his way, but his wide, blue-eyed stare stayed locked with mine, and the rest of the night faded into the next morning. Then the morning after. And the year after that.

Now his body is tense. Cold. When he looks at me, riveting my eyes on his, I wish he’d never looked my way at all.

I cross my arms to hide the way my hands are trembling while the shake in my voice threatens to swallow me whole. “I m-might have an easier time believing you if… if you hadn’t cheated before.”

He laughs. Fucking laughs. “And there it is. You’re really never going to let that go, are you? That was a fucking year ago.”

“Yeah, during the last rodeo season,” I remind him.

“This is my fucking career. What do you want from me? Want me to quit roping?” His hand sweeps over the couch cushion next to him like he’s searching for a weapon, until his fingertips land on his phone.

“Fine, I’ll text Holden right now and tell him I’m done.

He can find a new header since you don’t want me roping anymore. ”

Holden, Logan’s twin brother and team roping partner, is the one person on Earth who pisses me off more than my boyfriend does.

Funnily enough, before I started dating his brother, there was a time when I had a bit of a crush on Holden.

He was the nicest guy in my then-roommate’s poker group—the only one who ever invited me to join them, insisted the group keep the volume reasonable while I was grading papers, and stuck around to clean their mess at the end of the night.

Holden Kearney was nice. Key word: was.

I should tell Logan to do it. Burn the whole damn partnership down. Let him blame my crazy girlfriend behavior for ruining their lives.

But I don’t. Because I never do.

“Logan, no. No, that’s not what I’m saying,” I murmur, hating how soft it comes out. “I just want to know I can trust you.”

“Clearly my word means shit to you.” He drops his phone next to him.

He was never going to send it, but I can’t find the energy in me to call him on it.

Not tonight. “I don’t know what you want me to say.

Want me to confess to shit I didn’t do? Apologize so you’ll get the hell off my back? I’m sorry I did nothing wrong. Happy?”

“It’s not about what you say. It’s about your actions.”

Namely, it’s about the way he immediately went on the defensive when I brought up the message.

“So what—you want to tag along this summer to make sure I don’t breathe in the direction of any girls you think are prettier than you?”

No.

God no.

That’s desperate and pathetic.

“I mean,” I hear myself say, “I have the summer off from teaching anyway…”

He lets out a cruel laugh. “Of course you do.”