Now she didn’t know what to do.
She was the first one to arrive at the restaurant, so she ordered a margarita and then proceeded to down it in the space of a minute, between bites of chips and salsa. When the waiter asked if she wanted another, she made a rolling motion with her hand, indicating that he should keep them coming. By the time Miranda and Beth Ann showed up together, she was halfway through sucking down her third.
Miranda slid into the booth on the opposite side of her, her eyes wide at the empty margarita glasses. “Wow. Bad day? You fighting with Grant again?”
“No,” Brenna said miserably. “We’re awesome. That’s the problem.”
“Why’s that a problem, honey?” Beth Ann slid in next to Brenna. “You both seem pretty happy lately.”
“Oh sure.” Brenna waved a hand, wishing she were drunker and the thought of their being happy together didn’t hurt so much at the moment. “It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye. Or their heart.”
“Huh?” Miranda shook her head. “You need to eat to kill that margarita buzz, or I’m going to have to drive you back to the ranch.” She raised a hand for the waiter. “We need three coffees over here, please.”
“Some of us are trying to get drunk, Miranda soon-to-be-Croft.” Brenna glanced over at Beth Ann. “And Beth Ann Waggoner.”
Beth Ann beamed at the mention of her new last name. “Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?”
It did, and she was so ridiculously happy that it almost hurt to look at her. She and Colt had moved together seamlessly after their initial clash, and now they were so tight that it seemed like they’d always been a couple, instead of a fairly new one. She’d only been Beth Ann Waggoner for a few weeks now, and Colt’s girlfriend for not much longer. But it was clear that they were deeply in love.
Brenna Markham, she tested on her tongue, but wasn’t unhappy with it. Which only made her feel more jumbled inside.
“What’s bothering you, Brenna?” Miranda asked as the three coffee mugs were set down in front of them.
“I’m just . . . not sure what to do.”
“About Grant? It’s clear he’s crazy about you.”
“He will be until he finds out the truth.” Brenna couldn’t help herself. She looked at Miranda’s wrist to see if she was wearing her purple bracelet. No sign of it. For some reason, that made Brenna sad. She should have kept the bracelet. But keeping stuff led to other things, and those other things terrified Brenna.
Both Miranda and Beth Ann were giving her concerned looks, clearly waiting for her to go on. She didn’t, though. They were her friends, but she couldn’t tell them her deepest, darkest secret. She couldn’t tell them any of it. So she deflected. “Grant told me some stuff about his first wife. Did you guys know her?”
“Heather? We knew her in high school, but they both went off to college together and we didn’t see her again after that.”
“What was she like?”
Miranda glanced at Beth Ann, then shrugged. “She was cute. Cheerful. Easily bored.”
“A bit of a daredevil,” Beth Ann added. “Remember we used to have slumber parties and she’d always be the one to suggest Truth or Dare? Girl never found a dare she didn’t like.”
“But she was nice,” Miranda said. “Really nice. Everyone in town liked her. We were all sad when we heard she passed.”
Couldn’t even bury my own wife, Grant had said miserably. Because her body was stuck somewhere on Mount Everest, where people just climbed past it, heads full of their own daredevil quests. He’d thought he’d somehow not been enough for her and she’d turned to thrill seeking. But it seemed like the seed of it was there all along. She wondered if she should tell Grant. Would that assuage some of his guilt or just bring up old memories that he didn’t want to relive?
“Why do you ask?” Beth Ann prodded, reaching into the chip bowl and nibbling daintily. “Grant say something about her?”
“A little,” Brenna hedged. “He told me he loved me last night.”
Miranda gasped and then clapped her hands in excitement. “Oh my gosh. That is so great! I’ve always wanted you two to be together! So you accepted his proposal?”
“Proposal?” Beth Ann looked shocked. “He proposed?”
This conversation was going from bad to worse. Brenna stared into her now-empty margarita glass, wishing she had another. “It’s not great, and no, I didn’t accept his proposal.”
Miranda’s excited clapping died.
“Why is it not great, honey?” Beth Ann asked softly, her voice gentle.
“Because I’m afraid of hurting him again,” Brenna admitted, misery in her voice. She shoved aside her empty margarita glass and pulled the steaming coffee toward her. “Heather destroyed him. Totally broke him. It’s awful. What if I do the same thing to him?”
Miranda and Beth Ann shared a look. “How would you do the same thing to him, Bren?” Miranda asked. “You planning on climbing Mount Everest?”
“Of course not.” But she had secrets. Big, ugly ones. Just like Heather had. And those secrets were relationship destroyers. She’d seen it happen time and time again. Her mother’s relationships had never survived it, and Brenna had the scars to show for it. “But . . . I just don’t know what to do.”
“About what? You’re confusing me.”
“I’m pretty confused myself, don’t worry.” Brenna sighed. “Let’s say your past sucked, and you don’t want Grant to know about it. What do you do, then?”
“You tell him,” Miranda said.
“Let’s say telling him is not an option.”
“You tell him,” Beth Ann said, reaching for another chip. “And if he’s the one for you, he won’t hold it against you.”
“But what if he can’t help but be freaked out by it? How can he not look at me differently?”
“This isn’t about an STD, is it?” Miranda looked concerned. “Because you really need to tell him if that’s the case.”
“Gross! No. Not an STD.” Brenna cupped her hands around her coffee, thinking. “Just something . . . unsavory in my past. I don’t want him to look at me differently.”
“Are you in love with him, too?” Beth Ann asked. “I was under the impression that things were just casual between you two and that was how you wanted it. No strings, no nothing.”