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SADIE
The line at Strange Brew pissed me off. More coffee was the last thing I needed right now, considering how amped up I was. But I figured Kobie could use a cup.
So I stopped by on my way to meet her at the community center for another planning committee meeting. I’d hoped the walk here would give me some time to shake off my anger.
Turned out it gave me more time to stew in my rage at Drew.
The man might be a goddamned closed book, but he wasn’t blind. Ivy was obviously hurting from his years of rejecting her attempts to thank him for the sacrifice he’d made to save her son. I could understand not being ready right after the accident. But five years later? You’d think he’d want to find the silver lining in everything he’d been through. A little boy was alive and thriving thanks to him.
Plus, it was total bullshit that he’d called me out like it was my fault things with us were temporary. It wasn’t like he’d tried even once to talk to me about how he was feeling about our relationship, if you could even call it a relationship. I thought his actions—letting me into his house, taking care of me, inviting me into his bed—meant something, but I guess I was just an idiot reading into things that weren’t there.
The whole walk I replayed his comments about my bright, shiny life and how I was going to bounce onto my next travel fling as soon as I was done with him. Fuck him. I’d built this so-called bright and shiny life by the hard work of living through my grief and anger and eventually learning to frame my past around what I had gained from it.
That shit wasn’t easy, but he could do it too if he tried.
I reached the front of the line and gave Grace my order.
“What?” I asked, unable to suppress an exasperated eyeroll at the cautious look she gave me. “What is this look?” I waved my hand at her face.
Everyone in line had been giving me strange looks for the last ten minutes. With my luck, news about our fight was already blasting across the grapevine.
“Nothing. Sorry. You’re taking these to go, right?”
“Yeah. I’m meeting Kobie at the community center.”
“Great, great.” She threw a nervous glance over my left shoulder, then her eyes darted back down to the counter.
For a microsecond, I worried Drew was behind me in line, but that was absurd, considering he barely ever left the house. I turned to see what had her acting so weird, and a cold pit opened up in my stomach.
Axel and Veronica Everett sat at a table by the front window sipping lattes. No hats or sunglasses like in all the pictures of them that graced the checkout aisle tabloids. Her dark hair was up in a messy bun and his green eyes sparkled with humor. They grinned at one another, sharing an inside joke.
I stared at them with my mouth hanging open like I’d encountered a unicorn in the wild.
Grace’s hushed voice barely registered from over my shoulder. “Sadie, please don’t—”
“Forget the coffees. I have to go.”
* * *
“Oh hey,I thought you said you were bringing coffee.” Kobie greeted me with a hug I was too numb to absorb.
I’d fled my big chance to save my job and my brain was still reeling.
My first instinct should have been to discreetly snap a picture of Axel and Veronica with my phone. Instead, I was confronted by my own gaping sense of loneliness. I wanted the kind of moment Axel and Veronica shared. I wanted that intimacy. I wanted nicknames and private jokes and quiet moments where you just looked at the other person and realized how lucky you were to be with them.
What I didn’t want was to invade their privacy for my own gain.
And what Axel and Veronica had? That wasn’t in the cards for me. I’d had it once and lost it. And that wasn’t the path Drew and I were destined for.
“You okay?” Kobie pulled me out of my reverie.
“Yeah, fine,” I lied.
My job at HypeKey was the constant that had kept me on a focused path for the last few years. And twenty minutes ago, I decided I was more interested in preserving the privacy of a couple I didn’t even personally know than saving my own career.
No big deal.
Despite being dazed by the turn of events, part of me was still worried about helping Kobie get things ready for the festival. Somewhere along the line, my priorities shifted to align with this little town, even though I didn’t fit here.
