That’s all that matters, I tell myself. He’s all that matters.
And then sunlight catches red hair across the yard, and it blazes like fire. I close my eyes. It wasn’t meant to be.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
LOLA
The restof the afternoon passes in a blur of silver trays and forced smiles and pretending my insides aren’t shredded.
I work on autopilot. Handing out canapés. Refilling glasses. Clearing plates. Keeping my head down and my eyes away from anyone whose name starts with an H or an R.
Every time I catch a glimpse of a cowboy hat across the yard, my stomach bottoms out. Every burst of deep laughter makes me flinch. I’m a mess. A smiling, professional, falling-apart-at-the-seams mess. I’m stacking empty platters in the back of the tent when Violet appears beside me, hip-checking me gently.
“Hey.” She ducks her head to catch my eye. “You okay?”
“Fine.”
She gives me that look. The one that says I watched the whole thing unfold, and we both know you’re lying. But she doesn’t push. Not yet. She thinks Reese is as much of a dick as I do.
“Listen, we’ve got everything covered from here. Luke and I can handle the cleanup.”
“V, I’m not going to leave you with?—”
“You’re not leaving me with anything. Reese won’t dare come near me, and Hunter looks pissed, yes, but not at you.” She grabs the platter out of my hands and sets it down. “Go home. Have a bath. Drink something strong.” Her eyes soften. “You’ve done more than enough today. Take the van, Luke will drop me home.”
I want to argue, but the fight has bled out of me. I’ve got nothing left. The adrenaline from the Reese disaster has faded, and all that’s sitting in its place is a heavy, suffocating shame that makes it hard to breathe.
He’s stayed well away from me, thank fuck. But, still, being in the same place as him makes me rage. I nod and pull off my apron, folding it over the back of a chair. “Thank you,” I say quietly.
She squeezes my arm. “I’ll be home soon, and we can figure out a game plan out of that apartment asap.”
I nod. We have one viewing left, the last one got snapped up before we even finished the tour. One shot to stay in New Falls without having a dick as a landlord.
I slip out the back of the tent so I don’t have to walk through the party. The sun is starting to dip, turning the sky a bruised orange, and the air has cooled enough that goosebumps prickle up my arms.
It’s beautiful here. I don’t want to go back to New York. Because even on shitty days like this, I’m still happier than I was back home.
I keep my head down. Walk fast. Don’t look back.
All I can see when I close my eyes is Hunter’s face. The way he shook Reese’s hand without looking at me. The way he said briefly like I was a stranger. Like that night in the truck had been scraped clean from his memory.
I was nothing to him.
I did that. I let Reese put his arm around me for long enough that it looked like a choice. I should have shoved him off the second he touched me. I should have?—
I round the corner of the tent and stop dead. Hunter is leaning against the tailgate of his truck, arms crossed, hat tipped low over his eyes. Like he’s been waiting. For me.
My heart drops into my stomach.
His head lifts. Those blue eyes find mine across the gravel, and there is nothing soft in them. No warmth. No teasing grin. No firefly. Just a hard, unreadable expression that pins me to the spot.
I do the only thing my body knows how to do when it’s cornered.
I run.
I spin on my heel and take off in the opposite direction, heading for the dirt path that leads to the main road. My flats slap against the ground, and my pulse is hammering so loud it drowns out the distant music from the party.
I don’t get far.