When We're Thirty by Casey Dembowski (beautiful books to read .TXT) 📕

“Good night, Will.”

Six hours. In six hours, he could have a fiancée. Once they discussed the details, she’d said. He smiled to himself, burrowing back into bed. Hannah had always been a step ahead. She was astute enough to know that Will hadn’t asked on a complete whim. He should’ve thought the proposal through more. But then he wouldn’t have done it. He would’ve stayed quiet as he had for the past several years, silently watching Hannah’s life flourish. It wasn’t that he hadn’t missed her—he had. But he couldn’t be around her and not love her, which had become highly problematic for all his relationships. But then there’d been Madison. She’d made him see past Hannah and want to love someone else. So he had let Hannah go, fallen in love, and done everything right. He had made peace with the Hannah-shaped hole in his life. Those things happened—college friendships stayed in college, people grew up and apart, life went on. And it had. Until four months ago, when Madison had quite literally screwed everything up.

When he’d come out of his vodka-induced haze a month ago, he had found himself a thirty-year-old man whose life was on the brink of destruction—his girlfriend gone, his family ties strained, and his job dangling from a tightrope. After a full week of no booze or other vices, he’d woken from a dream of Hannah—a memory, really. In the dream, Hannah had slipped her hand into his, running her fingers through his hair. It had been sophomore year before he’d realized his feelings for her. She had leaned in ever so slightly, and he jumped down from his stool to greet one of his fraternity brothers and to flirt with some other girl. Lila? Lilly? A month later, Hannah was dating some asshat from the baseball team. If Will remembered correctly, the two had met that same night over a game of beer pong. But she had liked Will first. That was the important part of the dream. All these years, he had secretly loved her. Maybe she loved him back.

Will jumped as his phone vibrated on his bedside table. His heart quickened a bit at the second vibration. Hannah? No, of course not.

“Stop calling me, Madison,” he said without bothering to hide his contempt.

“I will if you let me come over.” Madison was whispering. Somewhere along the line, she’d gotten the idea that whispering was sexy. He’d tried explaining to her several times that it was dropping your voice, not whispering, that denoted sexiness. But still, she whispered. It also meant that her fiancé was home.

“No.”

“I miss you, William.”

Maybe she meant it, maybe not. Their breakup, her infidelity, and then her constant attempts at an affair had blurred the lines of the truth too much for him to know who she wanted. Either way, it didn’t matter.

“You’re marrying my brother.”

“That didn’t stop you before,” she said, a hint of amusement coloring her tone.

He ran his hand over his face. It had been one moment of weakness. Everything that had happened between the three of them had been so fresh. His wounds had not yet cauterized and were constantly reopening at the seams. When she had appeared in his doorway, looking like the woman he loved, it had been as if he willed her into existence. The whole night had been a mistake, one of the worst of his life. It sent him spiraling, and he had only just figured out how to slow it all down again. But even with his resistance and the physical distance from Madison, the night they had shared after she’d chosen his brother lived with him, in the farthest corners of his mind, haunting him with its injustice.

“I can’t—no, Madison,” he said, the sudden wrongness of even this phone call hitting him. It wasn’t that he couldn’t be a part of the infidelity, but that he didn’t want to be. Not anymore. “Stop calling.”

He hung up then threw his phone onto his nightstand. She would call back and might even show up at his place. Madison wasn’t used to being denied. But he would not be party to her antics, especially now. He conjured an image of Hannah in his mind. For the first time, she appeared as a thriving and talented grown woman. An inquisitive, worried, and yet slightly intrigued expression played across her features, each emotion battling for equal ground. He closed his eyes, willing sleep to come. Tomorrow, life might begin anew.

Chapter 6Hannah

A leftover tidbit of half-and-half floated in Hannah’s coffee mug, resisting all attempts at removal. Meeting at eight in the morning had been ambitious. For two nights, she’d barely slept, and now she was supposed to be making life-changing decisions. She rubbed her face. Calling Will had been a gut reaction. She’d been pissed at Brian and herself and filled with disappointment. Marrying Will was ludicrous, but as long as his reasons checked out, she was going to do it anyway. Hannah’s stomach lurched. Why had she said eight in the morning?

At least the kitchen was cleaner than in recent weeks. Last night, before getting the brilliant idea to hide from her thoughts with Brian, she’d cleaned practically the whole apartment after work. Screw spring cleaning. Stress cleaning had a much better success rate. She eyed the refrigerator, scanning the assorted photos for any remaining of her and Brian. Instead, she found the Wilderness tickets still stuck in the clip. They had to be returned. It grated at her nerves. Brian would get no use out of them, except maybe through scalping. His delicate sensibilities probably made “scalping” a dirty word. So maybe she was still angry. She smiled into her coffee—better angry than bawling. Maybe she’d keep them and take Will. The concert was in a few months; it could be their honeymoon. Did a marriage of convenience get a honeymoon? Probably not, but an island