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“I’ll tell you another time.”
I type out the best words I can think of to Tess, hoping it’s some consolation.
Dom: I’m so sorry. One of my teammates got very sick and we had to land in Tallahassee. I’ve been in a hospital waiting room for hours and I forgot to let you know I wouldn’t make it.
I stare at my screen for a full fifteen minutes, hoping for a response.
Nothing comes.
Chapter Ten
Tess
* * *
“These will be gone by tomorrow,” I say lightly as I unpack a box of Nutty Bars from Cam’s grocery haul. “Then they’ll inhale the crackers, and when there’s not a speck of other snack food to be found...the oranges.”
When she doesn’t respond, I look over my shoulder and find her staring at her phone screen. I keep putting away groceries, but she doesn’t move, her feet planted on the linoleum floor and her eyes on the phone screen.
“What’s wrong?”
“What...nothing,” she says absently.
“Did that snaggletooth professor give you a bad grade on a paper again?”
She doesn’t respond, and I set down the can of Spaghetti-Ohs I’m holding.
“Hey, what is it?”
When she looks up at me, her brows are pinched together with worry. “It’s nothing, really. Everything’s fine.”
“No, it’s not. I know you better than that. Just tell me.”
She sighs softly as she sets her phone on the counter, screen side down. “Just more of Jake’s crap. I’ve never known a guy who had such a hard time accepting no for an answer.”
A red flag flies up immediately. Jake is the last guy Cam dated, but they only went on a few dates and she broke it off around two months ago. So why is he still reaching out to her?
“What did he say?”
“It doesn’t matter. He keeps asking me for another chance.”
“Even after all this time?”
She folds her reusable grocery bags and puts them in a drawer. “Yeah. Maybe I should tell him I only shave my legs, like, once a month and my boys are toilet-clogging hellions. I’m not stalker worthy.”
Her effort to make light of it falls flat. I can’t keep putting away groceries when I know someone’s fucking with my sister.
“Let me see the texts.”
With her dark-brown hair making a curtain to cover her face from the side, I can’t see her expression.
“I can handle it, Tess. Just drop it.”
I’m about to keep arguing with her, but I hear Zee coming up from the basement.
“Hey, what’s for dinner?
“Hot dogs and tots,” I say, going back to putting away groceries.
