TYLER'S POV
"If Maddy hadn't been… you know… so boring. So reliable. Brooke wouldn't have the opportunity to into our relationship. It was the pressure. That's all it was."
He snorted, a hard, spitting type of sound without any humor. He walked over to the shattered frame on the ground and kicked at one piece of the shattered glass with his toe.
"This was meant to be me," he grumbled at the mess. "I was the star. I was the brains. The genius kid in oil and gas man. The success story."
He lifted his eyes with his unfocused vision gazing into a past that now felt like a lie.
"And she… she was the girlfriend. The one who hung around. The boring one, if I'm honest. She was to watch from the sides. Cheering. Staring at me from a distance. That was the plan. That was the way it had to be."
