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There. It was out.
Finally.
“Could you be any more of an arrogant asshole?”
“What?” Chris raised his gaze to an angry Wes.
“I know you can be a bit of a dick, but really? You really think you could ruin her?”
The guy used air quotes to patronize him further, and Chris threw his arms up. “That’s not arrogance. That’s me being honest.”
Wes stood up, shaking his head. “I’m disappointed in you. You say you love her, but you deny the very basic element that makes Bronte Bronte. She may not look like it, but she’s got a steel spine. No one is ruining her. She knows what she wants, and she wants you. All you need to do is show her you deserve her.”
He had a point. A really good point. Bronte deliberated everything she did, sometimes to the point of exhaustion. Every decision was made with her eyes wide open and both feet on the ground, absolutely positive it was the right thing to do.
Looking back on their relationship through her eyes, he recognized how scary it must have been to accept her feelings for a person she hadn’t known for very long, and one who was a celebrity on top of it all. She’d gone against her own grain and was probably very much afraid of the possibilities between them, yet she took the jump anyway.
Then at the first sign of trouble, he pulled away.
When she came back to him for a sign, for hope, he let her go.
She’d taken such a huge risk, while he hadn’t given up anything.
Now that he understood, he only had to figure out how to fix it.
“You’re right,” Chris said after a while. “I left my family back in PA. There’s nothing left for me here anymore. I need to go home.”
Wes grinned as he offered his hand to Chris. “You know how I know you’re from Pennsylvania? You just said PA.” He tugged Chris off the couch with a slap on the back. “Let me know what the plan is when you figure it out, but in the meantime, you get your ass to set at six a.m. tomorrow. I don’t want any more phone calls where I have to make an excuse about you having food poisoning. You’ve got two weeks left. After that, we’ll figure the rest out.”
* * *
Bronte had hadone of those BFF heart necklaces when she was a kid. It was split in half so she and Callie, her best friend at the time, could each have a piece. The broken heart was cut in clean zigzag lines with a silver edge.
The adult kind of broken heart was very different.
It was ugly and raw. She couldn’t even say his name, she missed him so bad. And to make matters worse, there was no way to avoid him.
He was in magazines and on television.
In her dreams.
Everywhere.
The only place she was safe was at school, and she spent a lot of extra hours hiding there.
“Hey, are you heading out of here anytime soon?”
Bronte picked her head up from where it was cradled in her arms and glanced at the clock on the wall. Cartoon hands pointed at the time, 4:40.
“I think I’m going to work a little bit more,” she said, waving Rachel inside her classroom.
“On what?” Rachel shook her head sadly. “You have all your paperwork done for the rest of the year and all your lesson plans organized. If you’re really itching for something to do, why don’t you come across the hall and clean out my storage closet?”
A faint smile threatened to cross Bronte’s lips, and Rachel pantomimed tugging her with a rope. “You know you want to.”
She rested her chin in her hands. “Maybe next week.”
“I wish I could make you feel better. What can I do?”
