I broke to suck in a breath; the words came out so fast I forgot to breathe. I thought he’d have run by now, thought he would have called the fire brigade. He hadn’t moved. If anything, he seemed to be listening.
“I struggle to get close to people. I know this is athingwith me. But I had let Kevin in. I trusted him enough to put my guard down. To be myself.” I was talking to myself at this point, processing these feelings in real time. “And it’s like I came to find out that he was not the person I thought at all. It makes me feel stupid for not seeing the truth. I cannot express to you how much I hate feeling stupid. You wouldn’t think that with everything that happened in the past five minutes,” I teased.
There was the slightest twitch at the side of his mouth.
I let out a long sigh and met his would-be gaze.
“It’s like I feel simultaneously too soft and too hard for this world. I can’t let people in but somehow still manage to feel hurt by them all the time,” I said.
His lightly parted mouth shut with a smack. He swallowed as his large Adam’s apple moved up and down the column of his throat. After another moment, he slowly opened his mouth again to say something, but I held up a hand. “You don’t have to say anything. I know this is so far past normal and appropriate. There is nothing youcansay. It’s just what it is. I guess I didn’trealize I needed to verbally process with someone who had no skin in the game.” I shook my head and stood. The earth spun a little at the sudden movement. His hands shot out to steady my shoulders when I lilted to the left. It felt like safety, and I yearned to lean into his protection. I searched to find his gaze but was only met with stormy lenses and a beard. This man was a stranger, and I was pathetic. “I’m sorry you were caught in the crossfire of my battling emotions.”
I patted one of his hands awkwardly, so he released me. He cautiously pulled his hands back, his mouth in a grim, flat line.
“Anyway. I think the only healthy and rational thing to do now is allow me to flee with any scrap of dignity intact. Sorry again to interrupt your workday, and sorry for the possible psychological trauma I have inflicted on you.” I tucked my hair behind my shoulder. “Thank you for being a kind stranger and not abandoning me with what I now realize was the beginnings of a panic attack.”
I puffed out my cheeks and blew out a sharp breath. I would have to save groceries for another day. For now, I needed to get the heck out of dodge. I couldn’t stand to be in this place a second more.
Once again, I cut him off before he could talk by turning on my feet and running out of there. Not my finest moment, but nothing else to be done.
I had shared everything with this man. Once this numb state of shock wore off, I was going to be mortified. One hour in town and I was already scaring the locals. A new record, no doubt.
Good thing I was going up to the safety of my temporary cabin and would never need to interact with this man again.
Chapter 5
Levi
I was goingto murder Pace.
Or at least really shake up his fizzy water the next time I saw him.
I stared at the forgotten grocery basket of the woman who’d just run off and cursed my best friend’s name.
Recent breakup. Existential crisis in the dairy section. Verbal vomit for thesecondtime.
There was no doubt that this twirling dervish of a woman was my newest tenant. I could hear her in the response she mailed back to me as she was speaking. Would she have unloaded if she knew I was the owner of the house she was about to move into for two months? She seemed to think that I worked here.
Had I mentioned I would be murdering Pace? At the very least,he’d be the victim of several very long, uncomfortable scowls.
It was his fault that I was here in town to begin with. He volunteered me to come look at Betsy’s ancient refrigerator and then I had been all butattackedby that woman.
It’s like I’m simultaneously too soft and too hard for this world.
Was that some sort of prank? Had somebody gone into my head and plucked out my exact thoughts and found her to verbalize them? Her wide, unguarded brown eyes left no emotion hidden. Every single thought came out of those full lips twisted in distress, and she walked herself completely through her crisis.
As I, as always, stood silently by offering absolutely no help.
This was exactly why I never left the cabin. It was hard enough to interact with people; I never could have planned the alluring but weird little stranger having a panic attack in the dairy section.
I bent and grabbed her basket, then came out of the back room. I hesitated in front of the dairy section, glaring at the creamers as if they had something to do with it.
“Well, she’s an odd duck, isn’t she?” Ruth said as she appeared at my side.
I raised an eyebrow at the owner of the local bed-and-breakfast, dressed as always as though she were stepping onto Fifth Avenue and not Main Street, Cozy Creek. If she had any room available, this wouldn’t have happened. It was everybody else in this town’s fault that I had just been through this.
“Fair enough. Pot and kettle and all that.” She waved her hand through the air around her. “Was she okay?” she asked, gesturingto where she’d probably seen the woman escaping the scene.
I grunted.
