He looked angry. “I told you I was waiting for you. That I could commit myself to you. What more do you want?”

“Love? Respect? Fidelity? I’ll never have those things with you.”

“Let’s go somewhere and talk about this,” he said. “Someplace private.”

I really didn’t want to be alone and/or private with him. “I can’t. I have to get this membership thing straightened out and then I need to get back to work.”

Anger flashed across his face before he said, “So skip work. Shouldn’t an eight-year relationship, shouldn’t I, be more important than your job?”

He wasn’t. “I can’t just skip the rest of my day. People rely on me to show up and actually do my job. I don’t work for my daddy.”

“Whose fault is that?” he asked. Before I could respond he said, “I suppose none of this really matters because you’ll quit once we get engaged.”

I was so dumbfounded that it was several seconds before I regained my ability to speak. He was ridiculous and I knew, then and there, with a hundred percent certainty, that I was never ever going to marry Brad. And I couldn’t believe what he’d just said. He really thought he could make me stop working? If I’d been angry before, it was nothing compared to the total rage that threatened to consume me. My whole life my parents had tried to control me: what subjects I could study, who I was allowed to date and marry, where I could go to school, what kind of job I could have. I was so tired of other people assuming that they got to tell me how to run my life. Brad and I were never getting engaged or married. Was he delusional? “This is over. Please get that through your skull.”

Before he could respond, we were interrupted by one of Brad’s best frat buddies, Chip. He was carrying a gym bag, which made me think they’d been working out together. Or trying to hit on women together, since Chip seemed to enjoy encouraging Brad to cheat. I’d never liked the guy and I suspected the feeling was totally mutual. “We need to go. Sorry, Madison. But we have plans. You know how it is.”

Ha. Plans. I knew none of them would include Brad pretending to go to his job that his father provided, where he was paid an exorbitant salary and spent his days working out at the gym and playing Xbox and going clubbing with his idiot friends.

When I looked at Brad, there was nothing left. No lingering feelings, no teenage part of me that still held out hope. It was really over. I realized that I didn’t respect Brad. I couldn’t respect a man who treated life as if he were still in college, content to let his parents pay for everything so that he could prolong his adolescence. Who wasn’t passionate about anything besides himself.

Unlike Tyler. Who came from nothing and through hard work and ambition had created a great life for himself.

And who had helped me, someone who had been a virtual stranger to him. I couldn’t imagine Brad doing anything similar. He’d never done anything for anyone unless he benefited from it in some way.

Then Billy was back with a manila file folder in his hands. “I have the paperwork ready for you to sign.”

I turned my back on Brad and reached for the paperwork, ignoring him and Chip as they left.

The only way to get him to stop and to leave me alone would be to tell my parents the truth.

I had to stop putting it off.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The next few days passed by in a blur. Every evening, Tyler came home only a couple of hours after I did, making me think that his claims of always working long hours and being devoted only to his job seemed to not really be a thing. Because that wasn’t the reality that I was currently experiencing.

He would make us dinner, I would clean it up. We would talk about our days. I told him how well his stepsister’s advice was working, and Denny was like his old self again (although we still had some issues). Tyler entertained me with the stories of the colorful potential clients who came through his door, wanting to work with him.

Then we would retreat to the living room, where I would work on the winter festival decorations while watching television. He would either help me or do work on his laptop. I worried that the TV would distract him, but he said he didn’t mind.

We were settling into a routine that was so comfortable and . . . homey.

Tonight he was on his laptop while I watched an episode of Survivor and one of the particularly weaselly contestants reminded me of Brad. Which made me flash back to our last infuriating encounter. I paused my show.

“Would you want your wife to work?” I asked.

It was a weird question, but that didn’t seem to faze him. He paused whatever he was doing and said, “I don’t have a wife. I’m pretty sure you would have noticed by now if I had one.”

Ha. Noticed her? I would have already tried to choke her out from sheer jealousy by now. “I know that. I mean, you make good money. When you get married do you expect your wife to stop working? Even if she loves her job?”

He looked at me like I was a crazy person. “I would want her to do what she wants and what makes her happy. And if she loved her job, of course she should keep working.”

That made me smile with satisfaction. I knew Brad was not normal, but it was nice to have it confirmed. As was verifying that Tyler was awesome and guessing that he would probably be an awesome husband.

While I was daydreaming about our wedding, he asked, “Speaking of strange and out-of-the-blue questions, have you ever done a marathon?”

I was confused. “You mean like on Netflix? All the time.”

He smiled. “No, I mean like an actual marathon. Running. If I get this promotion and I stop traveling, I was thinking I would have some extra time on my hands and maybe I could train for a marathon.”

That just . . . did not sound fun to me. “You know the first guy who ran one of those died right after? That’s not exactly a ringing endorsement in my book.”

“I like exercising.”

“I can tell.” Whoops. I clamped my lips shut, hoping that it didn’t come across the way that I’d intended.

Apparently not picking up on my innuendo, he said, “I’ve always found running to be relaxing.”

“If you think running a marathon is a way to relax, I’m not sure we can still be friends.”

He laughed while clicking something on his computer. Which made me curious.

“Is that what you’re looking up?” I asked. “Information on local marathons?”

“This?” He actually looked a little embarrassed, which made me more intrigued. “No, I’m not looking anything up. It’s actually, that is, I’m . . . well, I’m doing something fun for me.”

Did I want to know what that was? “Like what?”

“I’m creating a game.”

Was this a Dungeons & Dragons thing? “What kind of game?”

“Growing up, I was fascinated by computers and especially programming. I loved the idea that I could create something out of nothing. I really wanted to be a software engineer. Lately I’ve been designing a game for mobile devices. It’s simplistic. You pop bubbles on it. I’m doing it to teach myself how to make programs that interact with smart screens so that later I can create something more sophisticated.”

“So all the programming you know, is it self-taught?”