Page 59 of Possessive Ink

“Have you been here before?” he asks.

I shake my head.

“We ate here the last time we were in town visiting Tori. The food is good.”

Nodding, I follow after him. “I haven’t had the chance to try it, but I have heard that it’s great.”

When we get inside, the hostess offers us a table either inside the restaurant or out on the terrace.

“Terrace, please,” Atticus says.

Nodding, she grabs two menus, then leads us through large, open French doors and out onto a whimsical terrace with honeysuckle hanging from the pergola that covers the whole space.

“Can I get you anything to drink?” she asks.

“Coffee, black for me. Lemon?” Atticus asks.

“Can I get an iced hazelnut latte, please?”

“Of course. I’ll grab them for you and be back to take your food order,” the server says, hurrying back inside and out of view.

The terrace is mostly empty with just a handful of tables full of what look like tourists sitting and eating, their attention solely focused on themselves and not us. Shuffling his seat closer to mine, Atticus drapes an arm around my shoulders, his fingers toying with my hair while we sit reading our menus in comfortable silence.

“Tell me more about you and your roommate?” he asks after a moment.

“Before I moved to Rockhead Point, I lived in Bozeman and worked in a fantasy-themed coffee shop. Avery was one of my regulars. She used to come in before and after her college classes, and after a while we became friends.”

“So she didn’t act like she did last night back then?”

A sour laugh slips from my lips. “No, she didn’t. She always seemed a bit tightly wound, but she was in her last year at college, and I thought she was just a typical stressed student. She wasn’t the only student like that that I served. Most of our clientele were exhausted college kids who were either partying too hard or staying up late to study and desperate for caffeine to help them make it through their day.”

“How good of friends were you before you moved in together?”

Sighing, I shrug. “Looking back, I guess we weren’t ever really friends. I served her coffee and asked her about her day. I sympathized with her when she got a B on a paper and not an A. I listened when she excitedly told me she’d been offered the internship in Rockhead Point.”

“Did she celebrate or sympathize with you?” he asks astutely.

Sighing again, I shake my head. “I thought she did. I thought we were friends, but when I think about it, I don’t know if she ever did or if I just assumed she had. It wasn’t until the day we moved into the apartment that she realized the dresses I wore to work were mine and not costumes I had to wear as a uniform to fit in with the fantasy theme at the coffee shop.”

“Has she been acting as crazy as she did last night the whole time you’ve lived together?” he questions.

“Not the whole time. Well, not that crazy the whole time.”

His stern, intimidatingly attractive face softens. “Princess, I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with that.”

“It’s my own fault really. I should never have agreed to move in with someone I hardly knew.”

“You thought you were friends,” he says sympathetically.

I nod, feeling stupid. “Yeah, I did.”

The server arrives with our drinks, and I’m relieved. It already feels like Atticus sees me too clearly, and I’m not sure I want him to see much more, at least not today. The Avery situation is already raw, and admitting to him that I’m aware it’s my own fault that I’m in this situation only makes it worse.

“Are you ready to order?” the server asks.

“What do you want to eat, Princess?” Atticus asks me.

“I’ll have the waffles and berries, please.”