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“Dream on, dreamer.” There was a lump in my throat; I tried to talk past it like it wasn’t there. “And don’t worry so much about me.”
“I’m your big sister. It’s in the contract.”
“Well, thanks.”
“Of course. And if you ever do want to talk about anything, absolutely anything, you know I’m right here…”
Oh, I wanted to talk to her so badly it hurt. I wanted to open up my mouth and spill out every toxic, horrible thing I was feeling until they were all gone and I felt scraped clean of my betrayal of Hunter—and it had been a betrayal, even if it hadn’t been on purpose, even if I had felt terrible afterward.
Even if I still felt terrible.
But I couldn’t do that to my big sister. I’d already vented so much to her; I couldn’t pile more things up on her shoulders. Not when she was already working so hard getting out from under the weight of my mother’s neuroticism.
I couldn’t let Paige take on even part of my burden.
Instead I asked, “Have you seen him?”
It was the exact wrong thing to say to keep Paige from worrying about me, and still it slipped out of my mouth.
Paige was reluctant. “Ally, I don’t know if this is the best—”
I couldn’t let it go now. “Come on, Paige, I’m not stalking him or anything. I’m not going to show up nak**ed declaring my undying love. I just…I just want to know how he’s doing.”
I must have sounded really pathetic, because Paige admitted, “Well, I did run into him at a charity auction. It was the one for the victims of hurricanes, to raise money for housing.”
“He looked—” My voice nearly cracked. “He looked okay?”
“He looked fine,” Paige said quickly. Too quickly.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“Nothing!” Too quickly again. Then, “Almost nothing. It’s not important, honestly it’s not. Can you just trust me on that, Ally?”
Visions of Hunter looking lost, his clothes worn, his frame wasted, dashed through my head. What if he was drinking? What if he wasn’t eating? What if he was—
“Paige,” I warned.
“It’s nothing.” She sighed. “It’s just—he had a date with him.”
Had I felt crushed before? I felt now like all the air had been forced out of my lungs in a single punch. I felt smashed as flat as a sheet of paper.
I was going through hell, but apparently losing me wasn’t even a blip on Hunter’s radar, not if he was carousing around town with a beauty on his arm. “Oh.”
I’d meant it to come out noncommittal or even disinterested, but apparently my cracked and bleeding heart showed right through, because Paige backpedaled quicker than a cyclist coming across an alligator dozing on a bike trail.
“Maybe it was a work friend,” she offered quickly, in a voice so bright and chipper she might have stolen it from a Stepford wife. “Or he might have been putting on a brave face. You know how guys are. They can’t admit when they’re hurt. Especially when they’re business hotshots, they think the tiniest scratch will have the sharks circling.”
“Yeah, sure.” It sounded reasonable. But I knew it wasn’t the truth. “Thanks anyway.”
Then we shared an awkward silence just long enough for me to look around my apartment and reflect on how quickly and effortlessly my entire life had gone to shit.
“Mom finally broke the news to Dad that both daughters ruined their chance with the most eligible bachelor below the Mason-Dixon Line,” Paige said finally. I could tell by her voice she was trying to lighten the mood. “I think he was mostly disappointed that he wasn’t going to be getting a discount on bourbon anytime soon.”
Great. Now I was disappointing even more people. Just perfect.
I changed the subject. “So, how’s Sergei? Is he still in the picture?”
Paige hesitated just long enough for me to intuit that she was debating letting me switch the focus of our conversation, but eventually the bait of being able to talk about her own life pulled her in.
“No, not really. We’ve been chatting, meeting up for coffee, that kind of thing. And we kissed a few times. But, well—” I heard the rustle of her long blonde locks as she shook her head, and I could just see that pensive sad expression I knew she’d be wearing. “I’ve realized that Sergei is what I really wanted when I was twenty-four, but now that I’m older I feel like…like I just can’t be looking back at the past like that. I want something real. Something that’s going to last.”
That was Paige, smart and sensible even in her rebellion.
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