I glanced around the ball, and if I wasn’t mistaken, a few people who had clearly been watching us looked away.
“She’s here,” Levi said when he was close enough to whisper it.
I barely heard him, but he wasn’t trying to keep it secret. He assumed that I already knew whatever he was trying to say.
“Who’s here?” I asked, keeping my tone light, a soft smile on my features in case anybody was trying to read lips from across the room.
The look that Levi and Claire shared told me they had assumed I already knew who this mysteryshewas, and I had an awful sinking suspicion that I did know.
Pace wouldn’t look at me. Instead, he just shrugged and said, “Okay?” As if he wasn’t bothered by the information.
But there was only one woman from Pace’s life who would take the title of “she” and not need to be spelled out.
“Is Kaylee back in town?” I asked nonchalantly.
Pace pulled us to the side of the dance floor. The music made it hard to hear clearly, and the fact that we’d stopped dancing was beginning to draw attention. Claire and Levi followed.
With slightly more room to talk, Pace looked at me with a flat nod. “She’s back in town. I don’t know if she’sherehere,” he explained.
The loaded looks made more sense. “Okay,” I said, staying neutral, not jumping to any conclusions.
“She is,” Levi said to Pace. “I’d heard she was looking to talk to you. Maybe she thought you were avoiding her and knew that you’d be here.”
Avoidingher.
The implications of her arrival sank low in my gut. Just how long had she been here?
“How long has she been back?” I asked.
I didn’t even try to hide the confusion in my voice.
Claire and Levi looked considerably uncomfortable. “I’m sorry, I thought you knew,” Levi said, looking pointedly at Pace.
“You guys are making a huge deal out of something that doesn’t matter,” Pace said with a laugh.
I kept my features serene even as my chest felt tight. I didn’t think that Pace still had feelings for her. It was my fear early on, but he had never mentioned her. Not once. But now I wondered if the fact that he so carefullyavoidedreference to her meant more than a casual mention now and then.
We hadn’t been going out around town. We’d been inside and become homebodies. I thought that was because we were in some feverish honeymoon phase of sexual exploration. I never guessed it was because he was avoiding her.
Pace must have seen the worry shifting my features because he turned to me and grabbed my hands. I was sure that if he had his baseball cap on, he’d have it off and twisting in his hands.
“I knew about her being back for weeks. Since the night of that warehouse fire,” he said. He shared it as though this information would make me feel better.
“Oh. Okay.”
I could see that he tried very hard to implore how little this information meant to him, but it had me re-investigating every interaction since then in a new light. The night I went to his house, he didn’t want to go out. Since then, we almost never went out. I had thought that he liked being more of a homebody than he’d realized and was leaning into that side of himself. I thought we were just really into all the lovemaking, but what if he’d been avoiding her?
If he were actively avoiding her, then he must still have feelings for her. People who genuinely didn’t care didn’t go out of their way to avoid their ex.
I had felt the eyes on us all night. I had wrongly assumed that people were intrigued and curious about our coupling. I thought maybe, pathetically, that they were thinking what a “handsome couple” we were, like Grandma had.
Now the sinking sensation in my stomach told me that they all knew. The whole town must have known for weeks, so why had nobody told me? Well, because why would they? Most of them didn’t even know who I was. They especially wouldn’t think it was any business of mine.
This was why he was hiding out.
Suddenly, the music was too loud. The people around me stood too close. The smells of perfume and sweat, cloying. I couldn’t take a deep breath in, and all my thoughts skewed negatively. Every single fear I’d pushed down now bubbled to the surface.
I wanted to cover my eyes and take myself away.My fears weren’t real. Feelings aren’t facts. Just breathe.
