Page 68 of My Fiancé's Brother
She shook her head. “It took five men to break up that fight. Oneman to restrain Matt. It took the other four men to hold Jackson back. I thought Jackson was going to kill Matt. It was so horrible. And embarrassing. Jackson took off. Neither Matt nor I heard from him for two years after that.”
“What was the fight about?”
“Neither one of them will tell me.”
We sat there in silence, lost in our thoughts. She began again. “Matt has expressed that he wants to mend this rift. I only hope that Jackson is man enough to let that happen.”
I raised my eyebrows. “From what I have seen, it looks like Jackson wants to mend the rift too.”
She sighed. “We'll see.”
The meal wasthe Irene-and-Matt show. They were like two old lovers catching up. I stopped counting the number of times she reached out and touched his arm. She laughed at all his inside jokes, and they had a lot of them. Matt held center stage and Irene played his faithful audience. Jackson and I sat silently listening. Matt and Irene had eyes for only each other. They hung onto each other’s words. They talked about things only they knew. My experience at private schools helped me realize that they were excluding us from their conversation. I looked at Jackson who listened with a benign look on his face. He didn’t try to participate, but he didn’t seem annoyed either. A dark thought crossed my mind. Had it been like this when he was a child?
I sighed and pushed my noodles over my plate. I was still trying to wrap myself around how bizarre the last 24 hours had been.
Matt had cheated on me. I was still waiting for the shock and the horror to crash over me and send me into another spiraling mess. Some chick had put her mouth around him, and that probably wasn’t the worst of it. It was alarming that I felt nothing over this fact. Shouldn’t I be feeling some measure of anger or pain? Shouldn’t thatbother me more than it did? I was more anxious about my lack of reaction than anything.
Could this all be just because his actions alleviated my own guilty conscious? Or was the shoe going to fall off in a few days and I would lose it? Only time would tell. I just needed to focus on the plan. We were going to get married, and everything was going to work out.
When we finished eating,Irene announced that she needed a ride back to her hotel.
“I can take you,” Jackson offered.
“No,” Matt jumped in. “I'll take her.”
The competitive nature of Matt embarrassed me. Had I never noticed before how he could act like a jealous, petulant child?
After they left, Jackson and I cleaned up the kitchen in silence.
“I’m going out for a bit,” he said.
“Sure. Have a good night.”
I jarredawake to the sound of the downstairs door opening. I rolled over and looked at my alarm clock. 2:48 AM. I listened intently and heard footsteps come up the stairs.
I opened my bedroom door just in time to see Matt walking up the stairs.
“What are you still doing up?” he asked, a weird expression on his face.
I rubbed my face and yawned. “I just woke up. Are you just getting home now?”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“That must have been quite the talk with your mom.”
“Yeah, time got away from us.”
I smiled at him. “That’s nice, babe. I'm glad you two had some time to catch up.”
“Well, I better get some sleep. I have a long day tomorrow.”
“Love you,” I said.
Without answering, he disappeared into his bedroom.
CHAPTER 22
The next morning,as I finished my breakfast, Jackson came in from one of his epic runs.
