Recalling Reality

Chapter 14

Three younger people pass by. Girls who look to be in high school. Maybe graduates of the year. Their shirts barely cover their midsections, and their shorts allow the bottom part of their butt cheeks to hang out. I don't see where it is anything to be proud of, but then again, I am always more modest than the others my age. Probably because I am a little thicker than the girls my brothers hung out with when we were growing up.

Ryan hands me a pretzel with pizza sauce in a little plastic cup. "So, this is our first stop and then I thought we will go and just hang out today."

"Really? And why would that be? Because Shane turned out to be doing someone and he doesn't want me to know?" That came out a little harsher than I thought it would. Though, it wasn't supposed to come out at all.

With Ryan's brows pinching in the middle, my heart starts to sink into my stomach. He isn't a bad guy at all. In fact, I like him and he treats me pretty darn great so far. But, he is Shane's friend. Not mine. I just have to figure out why he is being super nice to me, because the guy's friend never stayed friends with the girl after the breakup.

"No. He's not seeing her again. I would slap the shit out of him if he even thought about it. But, I highly doubt that he would go back to her after how much he likes you." His thick brows relax, but the anger tightens the muscles in his cheeks. "Shane has a good thing with you. And he would be an idiot to screw that up. She damn near drove him into killing himself over the shit she pulled."

"I know she slept with his best friend." I pop a piece of the pretzel in my mouth, and when I finally glance up at the face of Shane's best friend, my heart sinks. There is far more to the story then Shane told me, and Ryan knows the truth.

"I'm going to tell you this just because I like you, Hanner." His chest puffs out as his eyes scan the seating area right outside of the pretzel place where we are sitting. Seeing there is no one around, he finally makes contact with me again. "His best friend ... that was his brother, Hanner. The two had been seeing each other for over a year. With Shane working all the time, making all that money from taking on the large jobs, he tried making her happy by providing a nice place for her, giving her whatever she wanted. The night before the wedding, he was supposed to be at the hotel as planned. Instead, he ditched his party and ran back to the house to grab the ring out of his safe."

"They were having the party? I thought they were having the bachelor party?"

"His brother said he wasn't feeling that well, and he was going to crash at his house. But, his house turned into Shane's house, where the two have been hooking up all the time when Shane was working out of the country."

"So, he just walked right in on them?" My heart cracks and breaks at the thought of how Shane must have felt. To be excited to marry someone and find them in bed the night before ... no wonder why he was so devastated over the breakup.

"Not exactly." Ryan straightens up and dips his piece of pretzel in my sauce. "He was in the closet, unlocking the safe, when they came in. They didn't know he was in there. Then, they laughed at how stupid he was for not even knowing they had been doing that for over a year."

Tears film over my eyes as I watch a couple walk past, hand in hand and smiling. Shane was that guy once. That happy, in love guy. I saw it in those photos they had together. The ones that were no longer lining the hallway. "I'm sorry."

"I knew Shane ever since we both started school, but I really didn't know him until after that. Then, I tried to keep the fool from going insane."

"How can his brother do something like that? What did his parents say when they found out?"

Ryan's eyes cast a different look—horror mostly. But the pain that Shane went through shows in his face. "They told him that he should be happy for the brother. If Shane was better to her, then his brother wouldn't have had to pick up the pieces each time Shane left for a business trip."