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Nostalgia for simpler times, my college days, slid over me as I showered. I wasn’t sure what prompted me afterward to drive through campus and past the pizza place where Addilyn and I had gone on our single date. The sights and memories didn’t help my feelings of being on the edge, uneasy and unsettled.
A little ways down the road and the diner where I’d met up with Addilyn and Gideon came into view. My hands turned the car’s wheel, and I found myself parked, engine shut off before I’d consciously made the decision to do so.
No hunger pangs gripped my stomach, but something drew me, some unfathomable need to go inside.
Warm air hinting at salt water caressed over my nose as I climbed from the vehicle. The diner’s vintage front welcomed with its neon signs and the high-backed vinyl bench seats through the front windows.
The small restaurant appeared frozen in time, the same as when I’d walked through the diner’s doors years earlier. It sat unchanged—unlike me and the couple I’d met there for an exchange of information.
A blast of air conditioning cooled my face the second I stepped inside, my gaze flitting toward the table where I’d last spoken to the golden-haired angel with big eyes and sunken, pale cheeks.
Reconciling the old Addilyn with the woman clinging to Gideon I’d seen the night before proved difficult, and I slumped onto the bench, staring at the emptiness where she had sat.
I’d thought I had gotten over Addilyn, but catching sight of her at Ciarra and Josh’s wedding had brought a blast of those feelings back again. Demure and near silent…beautiful as an angel even though she’d seemed wasted away all those years ago.
I’d figured out the reason why she’d slumped in despair and wished I’d been the one to drag her from the depths of depression.
That had been Gideon, the lucky asshole.
But Nissa…she’d torn my thoughts off Addilyn, had obliterated all those old yearnings from my soul with the first clash of our gazes—
“What can I get for you on this glorious day?”
I glanced up to find a woman closer to my mom’s age than mine, her smile genuine. Strange day, I wanted to correct her, far from glorious. I couldn’t even summon my feigned, carefree grin that would have matched her happiness.
“Just a coffee. Thanks.”
While I didn’t need any more caffeine to ramp up the jitters already keeping my knee bouncing beneath the table, my appetite was nonexistent, and I’d feel like shit just leaving mere seconds after sitting my ass down.
I stretched my neck side to side, attempting to ease the tension that continued to ride my mind. It didn’t work. Like I’d stuck a screwdriver into a socket, I buzzed with pent-up energy, wondering why the fuck I’d stopped.
Should have run ten miles instead of three.
“Here you are, love.” The smiling waitress sat a white mug in front of me, the black liquid hot enough that tendrils of steam rose toward my nose.
“Thanks,” I murmured and hunched forward, hands wrapping around the coffee even though nothing about the summer day required a thorough warming up of my insides or palms.
Exhaling slowly, I focused on relaxing my muscles one at a time, trying to ignore the back and forth of my mind like the ebb and flow of the ocean. I wanted Nissa and all the trouble that would follow in her wake. I didn’t—I did.
I was damn well losing myself to madness.
A sleek BMW pulled into the lot, parking directly outside the window beside me.
Golden curls pulled back into a low ponytail highlighted a face unpainted with makeup, but the woman in the passenger seat couldn’t be mistaken for anyone else.
I closed my eyes and heaved a heavy sigh, slumping over my coffee as though suddenly drained of the nervous energy I’d been desperate to have leak from my system.
Seriously?
An unexpected arrival.
Definitely unwanted.
Why was fate fucking with me? Did she wish for covetousness to completely crush every tiny shred left of my heart?
A few seconds later, the bell from the diner’s door chimed, and the hairs on my nape stood on end. I could feel Gideon’s stare without turning, but I shifted anyway, wondering what he would do once he saw my face.
The best thing would be for the two of them to turn and walk away.
