Kind of like my respect for this idiot.
“Hey.” He pushes his sunglasses onto his forehead and squints at me. “Aren’t you?—”
“I don’t think so,” I grunt.
And I’m not even sure who he thinks I am, so I just assume he means,Hey, aren’t you the man who should’ve been with Loren all along, while I'm the incredible tool with zero sense of what I had before I tossed it away?
Or something like that.
We step out of the doorway to leave a path for people coming and going, and I’m about to keep going, steering clear of this dude for the rest of our natural-born lives, but he snaps his fingers at me. “Got it! Loren’s friend.”
I turn slowly. “Yeah. That’s right.” I have to fight not to make the words a snarl.
“Hey, can I ask you … How is she?” He has the nerve to flinch with the question, like he actually cares. “You probably heard things didn’t work out with us.”
“I heard.” I grit my teeth, almost losing the fight against the snarl. But Loren wouldn’t want this guy to know she shed one single tear over him. He didn’t deserve her then. He never will. “She’s good.”
Better off.
“I still think about her, you know. A lot.”
My hands ball into fists at my sides. “Do you.” Not a question.
“She was really great,” he says. “Our relationship was just …”
Oh man. He’d better be very careful what she says next.
“Too messy,” he says.
And now I kind of want to make the guy’s too-pretty face messy. Permanently.
“So you probably know what happened with her mom,huh?” He grimaces, digging his grave deeper. “Man, that was a hard time for everyone.”
For everyone.I seethe. But keep it inside.
“And then her dad took a major turn,” he continues.
“Harlan.” The name flies from my mouth like the punch I want to land on Foster’s jaw.
“Good man.” He nods, all sincerity. “As his former neurologist, I can’t share details, obviously. But let’s just say his condition’s brutal. And potentially hereditary.”
So much for not sharing.
“Loren was in some pretty serious denial about that last fall," he goes on. “They were both really going through it.”
“So you thought that was the perfect time to leave,” I say. Again, not a question.
Foster startles, then cocks his chin. “What was your name again?”
“Adams,” I grit out. “Bridger.”
He steps to me, pointing a finger at my chest. “Listen, Bridger. I think?—”
“No, you listen, Doctor Abel,” I growl. I’ve got at least three inches on the guy, and I use every one of them to loom over him. “I understand calling off a wedding. No one should get married who isn’t one hundred percent all in. But you pushed Loren away when she needed you most. That woman trusted you. And you betrayed her.”
He takes a step back, stumbling when the clips on his bike shoes send him off balance. I grab his arm, hauling him off the display of children’s books he’s about to topple. What I actually want to do is throw him across the store.
He scowls at me anyway.