Page 19 of Don’t Go Breaking My Heart

Chris and Luke walked over from where they had been playing pool. They took seats at the bar next to me. “Saw Merritt earlier at the hardware store,” Luke said. “How’s she holding up?”

“She seems fine,” I said, shrugging like it didn’t matter. “I wouldn’t know. If you saw her, you should have talked to her.”

Riggs raised an eyebrow. “Really? That’s all you’ve got?”

“Yep,” I said.

He exchanged a look with Chris.

“Didn’t you two used to be thick as thieves?” Chris asked. “What happened?”

I put the bottle down harder than I meant to. The glass thunked against the bar. “We used to be best friends, yeah, but that was a long time ago. She left for college, and we both moved on. Friendship fizzled out. Happens.”

Luke frowned, resting his elbows on the table. “You sure about that? She doesn’t look like someone who’s moved on.”

“How the hell would you be able to tell that by looking at her?” I asked. I didn’t bother trying to hide my frustration or irritability.

“If she had someone waiting for her back home, don’t you think they’d be here? Helping her deal with all this? Wouldn’t a boyfriend or husband be at his lady’s side? If he’s not, then he’s a piece of shit and she should dump his ass.”

I wanted to argue, but the words didn’t come. Instead, I found myself staring at the condensation sliding down the side of my bottle. I rubbed my thumb over it.

“Guess you’ve got a point,” I muttered, just to shut them up.

Chris grinned like he’d won something. “Knew you’d see reason eventually.”

Before I could respond, Riggs smirked and walked away to serve another customer.

“Speaking of seeing things, I saw you yesterday,” Luke said. “You were flying down the back road past Carson’s farm. You keep riding like that, man, you’re gonna eat a ticket or worse.”

I shrugged. “I wasn’t going that fast.”

“The hell you weren’t,” Riggs shot back, his eyes narrowing.

“You weren’t there,” I snapped. He shook his head and finished filling the glass under the tap.

“I was doing eighty, and you blew past me like I was standing still,” Luke said.

I shot him a dirty look. He didn’t know when to shut up. It was like being ratted out by my younger brother.

Luke whistled low. “That bike of yours is fast, but it’s not a tank. You better slow down, Kannon.”

“Yeah,” Chris added, his tone serious now. “We’ve all noticed it, man. You’ve been riding like a bat out of hell ever since⁠—”

The silence that followed was deafening. I knew exactly where they were going, and I didn’t want to hear it.

“Say it,” I said, my voice low.

Chris hesitated, then sighed. “Ever since Leah died.”

Her name hit me like a sucker punch. My grip tightened around the neck of the beer bottle, but I didn’t drink. Couldn’t. Instead, I stared at the table, my jaw clenched tight enough to ache.

“I’m fine,” I bit out. “It wasn’t that fast. And you don’t ride a bike like that to putter around like Grandma out for a Sunday drive.”

None of them answered, which pissed me off even more. What right did they have to talk about her? About me? Like they had any idea what it felt like to lose everything that mattered and still have to get up every day like the world hadn’t ended.

We sat in silence for a while. I knew things were awkward. I made them that way. That was nothing new. I had a real knack for making things uncomfortable. I was brash and had been told more than once I could learn to use a little tact.

Tact clouded a message. It could be misinterpreted. The way I talked left no room for misunderstandings. I said it like it was. Period.