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I scowled. “I don’t see how this has anything to do with me.”
Emmett gave me a hard look before he continued, “On the day of her wedding, her fiancé’s girlfriend showed up to tell her that he’d been sleeping with her.”
That had my attention.
“Ireland ran from the wedding, and I found her by a waterfall near my cabin. She was dressed in her wedding dress, and she was crying. I wanted to ease her pain.” Emmett threw back his shot, then poured another. “I took her to see the pond, and then it started snowing. She was stuck in my cabin for a couple of days.”
I whistled. “You still wanted her.”
Emmett nodded. “I won’t bore you with the details. But she hadn’t loved her boyfriend by the end. They’d been doing the long-distance thing, not well obviously. Maybe she thought what we’d shared was some vacation fling, a break from reality, but it was always more for me. When we decided to give the relationship a real shot, I think I panicked. I wasn’t used to having a girlfriend or being committed to anyone. When she got too close, I kicked her out of my house. I thought I didn’t deserve her. That I wasn’t good enough for her.”
“You fucked up.”
Emmett nodded. “Just like you. I fell back on old limiting beliefs. But the thing is, you are your own person. You are not the house you grew up in or how your parents act. You define the man you are now.”
“I thought if I enlisted in the military, I’d be a man worthy of her.”
“You still don’t think you’re worthy of someone like her.”
My jaw ached from grinding my teeth.
Emmett held up his hand. “You may not believe me, but think about it. Until you know you’re worthy, you won’t be.” He walked out of the room without another word.
I poured a second shot and drank it. He hadn’t helped me. His situation had nothing to do with mine. The alcohol was starting to cloud my brain. I needed to go back to the reception. I stopped in the bathroom to wash my face, then pat it dry.
Upstairs, the party was still going on. Plates of crumbs were on the tables, so I must have missed the cutting of the cake.
As soon as Marley spotted me, she crossed the room. “Is everything okay?”
“I took care of it.”
Marley’s hands rested on her hips. “You took care of our parents, or you took care of Fiona?”
“Hopefully, we won’t see Hank and Shay for a while, and Fiona is staying at her family, where she should have been all along.”
Heath walked up in time to hear my last remark. “Fiona left?”
Marley waved a hand in my direction. “Can you believe him?”
Heath had the audacity to chuckle. “Actually, I can. You always fuck everything up before you can get what you want.”
I ran a hand through my hair. “I just had a messed-up conversation with Emmett. I think he was trying to help, but he didn’t make any sense.”
Heath arched a brow. “Emmett talked to you?”
“Something about a runaway bride and thinking he wasn’t good enough for her because Ireland was some socialite.”
Heath nodded. “Ireland was a trust-fund baby. I’d forgotten about that.”
“I’m glad it made sense to you,” I said tightly.
“He thought Ireland was better than him. He didn’t deserve her, so he pushed her away. Kind of like how you kicked Fiona out and told her to go home.”
The hair on my neck stood on end. Had I done the same thing? “I wanted to protect her from my family.”
“By not seeing her anymore? By hurting her? How is that protecting her?” Marley started pacing. “You turned down her proposal for the same reason. You wanted to protect her, make her decisions for her. You thought you knew what was best for her, and it sure as fuck wasn’t you.”
“You got that right.”
