Well Built
Page 39

“Ella . . .” Kyle’s voice was deep and low and almost hesitant as it broke into her thoughts. “What happened between you and Tucker?”
She wasn’t surprised he asked, considering how he’d reacted to seeing her ex-fiancé at the bar earlier, and as much as she didn’t want to talk about Tucker right now, or ever, she wanted everything out in the open between them. No secrets. No misunderstandings. No resentments.
She exhaled a small breath. “What do you want to know?”
He absently wound a strand of hair around his finger. “Well, for starters, how did the two of you get involved in the first place?”
That was easy enough to answer. “We were always friends, but over time, that gradually changed. There’s not a whole lot of available men in town, and Tucker was and is a good guy. Someone dependable that I always could count on, and I was . . . lonely,” she forced herself to admit, because Kyle needed to know that, too. “When he asked me out on a date, I figured why not? What could it hurt?”
She felt Kyle’s body tense slightly, but he’d been the one to ask about the relationship, and she wasn’t going to lie about any of it to save his feelings. Besides, they’d already talked about the fact that he’d dated plenty of women in Chicago, even if they hadn’t been long-term commitments.
“We had a nice time and he was easy to be with. It was . . . comfortable,” she said, trying to find the right word to explain their dynamic.
A small, derisive laugh escaped him. “It sounds like you’re talking about buying a couch for your living room. Nice, easy, comfortable.”
She would have laughed, too, if he hadn’t just nailed the painful truth. “That’s just who Tucker is. He’s not overtly sentimental or affectionate. He looks at things in a practical, sensible way, and I tend to be more . . . ”
“Emotional?” he guessed.
The man knew her well. “Yes. And because of that, we could never really get past being friends. Not like us,” she admitted, because despite putting Kyle in the friend zone, the chemistry and attraction between them had been too strong to deny. That had never been the case with Tucker.
“Yet you were going to marry him,” he said gruffly, and she heard the hurt underlying his voice.
“Yes,” she said quietly, and she wasn’t proud of her reasons. “I want to be married. I want to share my life with someone, have a family with them, grow old together.” Her throat grew tight because she’d always wanted, and had once envisioned, that kind of future for the two of them. “I don’t want to be alone for the rest of my life, and I thought Tucker and I could make it work. Except, as time passed, I knew we’d never really get past being just friends. There was no passion in our relationship, nothing that excited or stimulated me mentally.”
She swallowed hard and continued. “I knew in my heart that I wouldn’t be happy married to him. And if I wasn’t happy, we’d both be miserable. The last thing I’d ever want is to end up bitter and resentful because he couldn’t give me what I needed, so I called off the wedding before we both made a huge mistake.”
Kyle’s hand drifted along her jaw, and he tucked his thumb beneath her chin and raised her gaze to his. A frown furrowed his brow, and the look in his eyes was tentative. “Did you love him?”
It was a hard question to answer, because love came in all different forms, and when it came to Tucker, her sentiment had been based more on fondness, caring, and respect. Not the kind of intimacy and passion and excitement—and a dozen other wild, exhilarating emotions—that she felt when she was with Kyle.
“Of course I loved him,” she replied honestly, not missing the flicker of pain that passed across his features, then was quickly gone. “I never would have agreed to marry Tucker if I didn’t have feelings for him. But it was never the way I loved you,” she said, unable to hold back that truth, too.
Her heart mocked her for using the word love in past tense, for taking the safe route, for giving in to her fears. She knew now that she’d never fallen out of love with Kyle, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it out loud because she knew it wouldn’t change anything between them, that their differences and lifestyles were too vast.
And sometimes, love just wasn’t enough.
 
 
Chapter Eleven
 
 
Three months later . . .
Kyle leaned back against the tailgate of his truck, his legs crossed at the ankles and his arms folded over his chest as he admired what he’d created for his mother in the past three months. The once dilapidated property had been transformed into a beautiful building, inside and out, that had the entire town excited about having a brand-new bakery and a venue for events . . . except, of course, Ella’s father.
Kyle wasn’t sure what Charles was more upset about. The fact that Kyle had purchased the building for his mother—which unfortunately resulted in Ella losing the opportunity to expand the market—or the events of the past that the bitter older man still judged him by and couldn’t let go of.
At this point, Kyle was beginning not to care what the reasons were, except that it affected Ella’s views on their relationship. Or rather, their secret affair, because that’s exactly what it had been since the night they’d fallen back into bed together. Stolen moments on the weekends. Him sneaking into her bedroom—and sneaking right back out after their too short time together. Seeing her at the market while he worked on the building, yet maintaining their distance to keep any gossip at bay.
There were no fun, casual dates that normal couples went out on. No holding her hand and hanging out in public together. No, everything was reserved for those few hours they had together in her bedroom, and during the week, it was sporadic phone calls and texts that kept him going until the next time he could see her, be with her.
He fucking hated it. He’d played by Ella’s rules, and on some level, he even understood why she was so guarded, that old habits died hard and for the past ten years, all she’d known was working at the market and taking care of her father. That had been her life because she’d been cast as the responsible one. The dependable one. And she clearly took the role seriously.
But something had to change, because they couldn’t keep going on like this. And for the past three months, he’d been patient. He hadn’t pushed her for more than she’d been willing to give, though he’d felt an undeniable shift between them over the course of that time, had seen and felt the evidence that there was more than just sex between them.