I bit back my overwhelming desire to grill him about it until I finally couldn’t stand it any longer.
“Guess you didn’t end up going home after our hike yesterday, huh?” I blurted, tossing a serving tray onto a rack and barely managing to avoid the swinging kitchen door.
Jack glanced up from the center island worktable. “W-what?” His gaze darted around the room guiltily.
“You look wrecked.” The words came out like an accusation. “Who’d you hang out with?”
“Who?” he repeated. He licked his lips. “N-no one? Why? What have you heard?”
He couldn’t have looked guiltier if he had anLfor liar tattooed on his forehead.
My head throbbed, and my tired eyes burned. “I see. If you don’t want to tell me, fine.”
I turned around and slammed my way back out of the kitchen, which was significantly less satisfying with a swinging door.
“Hawk?” Crys asked softly as I grabbed a tray from the wait station. “Are you losing your mind, boo? What’s going on?”
I pressed my fingers into my eyes. “What’s going on is my sister was staying at a friend’s last night, and Aiden was with his mom, soeachof the couples living in my house apparently decided to perform their own reenactments of the Cocky Boys’ greatest bangs at full volume. Luke and Webb were upstairs, Drew and Marco downstairs. There was no escape. The charge on a pair of noise-canceling headphones only lasts so long, Crys, and Marco has no idea how loud he is now that his hearing is going. My ancestors did not design that house with live porn in mind.”
She flinched. “Oh, god.”
“Yes.Exactly. Imagine those very wordsbeing moaned by four different voices simultaneously like a lusty barbershop quartet.” I sniffled. “I’m exhausted, and frustrated, and… I can’t live like this anymore. This whole damn town is in the throes of a fiery mating frenzy, and I’m like a stack of kindling that’s been drying out for almost twenty-five long years.” I straightened my shoulders. “I think maybe you were right last night. I’ll message Simon about… dinner.”
Crys grinned. “Good for you,” she said fiercely. “Sometimes things have to get worse before they get better. You’ll see.”
I really hoped she was right because I wasn’t sure how much more “worse” I could take.
I managed to keep my shit contained through the morning rush and most of the lunch shift, too. I ignored Jack and his gorgeous smile and his traitorous sad eyes. I smiled at customers and took orders, remembering that little Bodhi Miller liked “extra cherries, Mr. Hawk” in his Shirley Temple. I volunteered to clean the bathrooms and pretended the acidic churn of hurt and longing and anger in my gut wasn’t there. I even managed to stay calm when my family got seated in my section, even though Gage kept asking me random, ridiculous questions like “If youwere forced to pick bondage or carpentry as a hobby, which would it be?”
But when Webb and Luke strolled in, looking like they’d tumbled naked through an entire orchard, projectile vomiting love and hope and satisfaction all over the diner, the last thread of my frayed control snapped.
I could not continue sleepwalking through my life, pretending things were okay. Everyone around me was reaching out and grabbing their happiness while I was morphing into a bitter, miserable jerk I could barely recognize in the mirror.
Enough was enough.
I slammed water glasses down on the table.
“You look like you just had sex in the orchard,” I accused, reaching my give-a-shit limit. I whirled around and found Jack standing two tables away, delivering a check to a customer. “Everyonein this town is having sex except me! I’m going to be a virgin until I die old and alone. I’m living with a damned cherry that will never be picked!”
I yanked off my apron and, in the sudden, pulsing silence that filled the restaurant, threw it at his feet. “I quit.”
And then I turned and stormed out of Panini Jack’s.
CHAPTER SEVEN
JACK
“There are very few who have heart enough to be really in love without encouragement.”
~ Charlotte Lucas
I straightenedup slowly from the table where I’d been delivering Betty Ann Wolff’s bill. Everyone in the restaurant was shocked into silence at Hawk’s outburst, but I barely noticed anyone other than Hawk himself. His anger radiated off him so much so that he reminded me of the prickly pinecones we’d fallen into on the trail to Balderdash Peak…
Only this particular pinecone had been launched fast-pitch-style at my heart.
He shot me a glare and stormed out of the restaurant, setting the bells on the door jangling, and disappeared down the street.
What the fuck had just happened?
