“I’m sure, but I have a little sister too and it’s categorically true that it’ll be easier for Avery to deal with that prick if he knows you’re safe.”
“So you’re doing this forhim?” I asked as we slid onto two empty stools at the bar. The tension still simmered twenty feet away.
Theo shrugged, a lock of his dark hair falling across the forehead as he twisted to watch the action. “All I’m saying is that it looks like he’s got it handled. Having you in the fray is what might get him hurt if that escalates.”
I took a sip of the beer the bartender slid to me. “Avery can be a fighter when he needs to be. He’s calmed down in his old age, but he would have been okay with or without me there.”
“In his old age?” Theo nearly choked on nothing but air. “How old do you think is old?”
I turned and pretended to study him. “You’re, what, thirty-five?”
“I’mtwenty-nine.”
“Really?” I tried frowning, but I couldn’t get my face to complete it without a smile threatening to take over. “Did you have a rough paper route as a teenager or something?”
He laughed. “Wow. That hurt. I pride myself on my skincare routine.”
I nearly sprayed my next sip of beer all over him. “That’s actually true, isn’t it? You have a skincare routine that involves more than just water and soap?”
“Hey, it’s a very manly skincare routine.”
I couldn’t help the chuckle that bubbled out of me. “Of course. Grease and a dirty towel only.”
As he shrugged, I felt some tension ease out of my shoulders. Theo acted like he was constantly amused by life, even when things got uncomfortable, and being around him, it was too easy to lower my guard more than I usually would.
He glanced back at the pool tables where Avery was now waving Hunter’s friends away. “Who are those guys?”
“They’re friends with my ex-fiancé,” I said, shocking the ever-loving heck out of myself for admitting it.
This had happened earlier in the hardware store, too. I told this guy things without meaning to open up and yet it just came out.
He let out a low, quiet whistle. “Ex-fiancé, huh? It’s no wonder Avery wants to beat their skulls in.”
“Yeah,” I said, picking at the label on my bottle. “He was having an affair with my ex-friend, and eventually, I caught on. Broke up with both of them. Now, they’re married and living in Tucson. Apparently, they’ve got a baby on the way and those guys just couldn’t wait to let me know about it.”
“Shit, that’s rough. I’m sorry. It can’t be easy, still living in a town where everybody knows your history.” He met my eyes over the rim of his beer. “I understand the feeling.”
I paused for a moment to just stare at him. Nobody hadeversaid that to me before. I’d thought I’d heard it all by this point, but Theo was the first person to have dived right in and immediately touched the very heart of the issue.
I was over Hunter. Hell, I was even over Farrah and the amount of times she’d looked me right in the eyes and lied to me.
What continued to sting wasn’t that. It was the fact that absolutely everyone knew exactly what had happened and they were still treating me like I was fragile because of it. Theo had not only instantly gotten there, but when he’d said that he understood the feeling, there was real, very honest understanding in his eyes.
“What does that?—”
“Another round,” Avery announced as he suddenly appeared beside us, dropping into a barstool with his friends hot on his heels and no sign of Franklin or the others behind them. Heclapped Theo on the shoulder. “Thanks for getting her out of there, man. Next round’s on me.”
I squinted at Theo, but the moment to ask him how he’d known all that had passed. It had left me with a sneaky suspicion that there was more to this out-of-towner than I’d thought, though, and when I went to join back up with Miley and Ethan, who had arrived since I’d left, I couldn’t help wondering if I would ever find out what it was.
CHAPTER 7
THEO
Landscaping was bullshit. I’d never done it before, but thirty minutes into Frieda’s latest assignment for me, I’d learned that I wouldnotbe making a career of trying to win the war against weeds.
It was impossible. These desert plants would survive a nuclear winter and still come out asking if radiation had anything more to throw at it.
I stood in the motel garden with the Arizona sun beating down on the back of my neck while I tried to wrangle a pair of hedge clippers older than I was. Once again, I was coated in dust, sweating through my T-shirt, and seriously questioning why I’d agreed to the work-stay arrangement in the first place.
