I shook my head, panicked. “I… what?”
“Maybe there’s no such thing as the right person. Maybe I should just get it over with and do it with… well, anyone. That’s why god invented hookup apps. I mean, like you said earlier, what’s the big deal about virginity anyway?”
“Huh? No, when I said that thing about virginity earlier, I was talking about Regency England. I was talking about the heroines in your books. I wasn’t talking aboutyou?—”
Hawk gave my forearm a cursory pat. “I think you were right earlier. It reallyiswarm out here, and we have the town meeting tonight. I’m gonna head back. I’ll see you later.”
“But… Hawk?” I shouted as he picked his way back down the trail, an odd stiffness in his posture that was either due to his injuries from the pinecones or his injuries from… me. “Since when do you quit a hike before we reach the summit? And… wait, since when have you been with lots of guys before?”
He didn’t respond or acknowledge me in any way. My heart pulled itself up out of my gut and flung itself down the trail after him like a stupid fucking traitor while I stood there in a strange kind of numb shock.
I’d screwed up, that much was obvious, but I had no idea what I should have done differently, and I had no clue how to fix it.
All I knew was that I’d better figure it out quickly before I lost something that had become even more precious than I’d let myself realize.
CHAPTER TWO
HAWK
“A girl likes to be crossed a little in love now and then.”
~ Mr. Bennet
I was goingto have to go into hiding. That’s all there was to it.
“What the heck’s wrong with you, Hawkie?” Emma asked, elbowing me down the row of chairs in the assembly room of Little Pippin Hollow’s town hall. “You’ve been acting funny the whole way here.”
I propositioned Panini Jack, and all I have to show for it is pinecone rash on my ass.
The guy I’ve been in love with for years confirmed that I’ll only ever be a little brother to him.
A spot of casual heartbreak. No big deal.
“I’m fine,” I insisted, low-key darting a glance around the meeting space, just in case Jack happened to be looming nearby. “Just because I’m not talking doesn’t mean I’m upset, Em. Can’t a guy keep himself to himself around here?”
Emma’s inelegant snort brought my attention to the crowd around us. We were surrounded by Little Pippin Hollowans, illustrating the very antithesis of keeping oneself to oneself.
One row ahead of us, Frieda Lower was complaining in a carrying voice, “Can you believe Norm Avery had the audacity to advise me—and I say that with sarcasm, mind—on the best way to irrigate the crop now that my squash are in? I’ll thank him to mind his own danged business, and that’s precisely what I told him…”
Oumar Diallo sat upright beside her, arms folded across his chest, and nodded along, but it wasn’t clear from this angle whether he was agreeing with her or he’d fallen asleep with his eyes open again.
Meanwhile, Letty Hendelmann stage-whispered a warning to her neighbor Fran Driscoll. “Did you know right around daybreak when the sun isjustpeeking around the corner of your big oak tree that someone—not me, obviously, because I’dnever—could see right into your guest room window? I’m just saying you might want to go ahead and hang those curtains Marie said you picked up at the Save-a-Ton back in January…”
“Yeah, no,” my sister whispered, amused. “If you’re looking to mind your own business, I think you were born in the wrong place.”
I dropped into an empty seat next to my brother-in-law, Luke, who greeted me with a grin and an affectionate arm bump. Emma dropped into the seat beside me and turned her body in my direction, ready to continue her inquisition, so I turned toward Luke with a forced smile, hoping I didn’t look as desperate as I felt.
“So! Luke! How’s it going at your place? Tell meallabout the sheep.” I begged him with my mind not to ask about me, or Jack, or hiking, or… anything that would require me to further contemplate this debacle of a day.
“Going great. The new lambs are so cute.” Luke’s eyes went dreamy. “Aiden named them all after comic book characters. Ifyou’re not too busy volunteering with the Nature Scouts this week, you should come by?—”
Webb set a hand on his husband’s knee and leaned across his lap. “’Bout time you arrived, Hawk. Jack was asking for you earlier.”
It seemedWebbwas not picking up on my psychic message.
“Oh.” I swallowed hard. “Was he?”
“He said you got hurt during your hike and he was worried.” Webb’s gaze tracked me up and down, looking for signs of injury.
