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“I know you do, but it won’t happen.” Her words dug in like a rusted spoon carving out my heart. “She’s gone, Trap, but you still have Shade.”
I huffed. “Not really. That brooding bastard doesn’t even try to pretend he’s happy. It feels like it all falls on me to keep us both from….”
“From?” she hedged.
“Never recovering.” The two words were barely audible over the music and chatter around the bar.
“Listen to someone who thought she found the one, her person to love forever, only for it to all be a lie. Let me tell you about recovering.” Her tiny arm snaked around my ribs and squeezed. “There isn’t a time limit, and honestly, I think it’s a constant, ongoing decision we have to make. It’s like the body recovering from a major injury. It takes time, hard work, and the scars will always be there as a reminder of what happened.”
“I think mine’s still an open wound.”
“Well, yeah, because of the shit you’re doing to heal. Random women and booze are not the healthiest of choices. That’s medicating, tempering the symptoms instead of getting to the root of the problem.”
“The problem being that I can’t breathe without wishing that semi would’ve taken me too,” I admitted.
“You don’t mean that,” she whispered. “Then I wouldn’t have met you. You’re one of my best friends, Trap. And think of Shade. What would’ve happened to him? You have us. Me, Shade, Anne, Max. Focus on the things your new life has brought you.”
“And how is that going for you?” It was a dick move, but I was drowning in self-loathing and grief and wanted someone else to feel the pain.
“It’s day by day. Some days, it’s minute by minute of not allowing the anger to consume me whole.”
I thought that over for a moment. “And how do you do it? How do you have enough energy to do that all day, every day?”
She sat up and pressed both elbows to the bar while twirling the straw in her ice water.
“I talk to Anne, run every morning, and focus on what I have now. If that bastard hadn’t broken off our engagement, then I wouldn’t have my practice here. I’d still be in Dallas living a life that was never really what I wanted but thought I did. I wouldn’t have reconnected with Anne, or met you and Shade. Every day I force myself to focus on the fact that what I thought would break me actually strengthened me. It’s difficult to move forward. If it wasn’t, then the hurt and sorrow that comes with a broken heart wouldn’t be written about in every song and poem, describing the agony.”
“Like this fucking song,” I grumbled.
“Yeah, it’s not helping.” Hopping off the stool, her feet slapped to the worn wooden floor. Setting her purse on the stool, she dug through the inside, smiling when she held up a five-dollar bill.
“What are you doing, Caradee?”
“Changing the mood in this depressing place. I’m thinking old-school Reba or Shania.”
Despite my down mood, a smile curved the corners of my lips as I watched her weave between the tables toward the jukebox.
She was right about one thing: Iwaslucky to have her, and the other friends I’d made since Shade and I moved to Grandger from Houston.
This wasn’t a terrible life, just different from the one I’d imagined for where I would be at this point.
Staring at the magically full shot glass, I ran Caradee’s words over in my mind. Maybe I was simply medicating the symptoms of my grief, and that was why everything still felt so fresh, my heart raw. I hadn’t healed, just masked the pain.
With an exasperated sigh, I pushed the full shot back toward the other side of the bar and rubbed a hand down my slightly numb jaw. An avalanche of awareness bombarded my fuzzy thoughts.
What the hell was I doing? The drinking, the various women—none of that would bring Jessa back. I had to come to terms with the fact that what the three of us had was great, but that was then. This was now. I had a future, just not one with Jessa in it.
I still had Shade—my best friend, partner, brother in arms. And he needed me.
Compared to him, I was doing fucking great.
“I said don’t fucking touch me.”
My head snapped toward Caradee’s raised voice, eyes scanning in search of my petite, yet feisty, friend. When my gaze landed on her long blonde hair, then took in the fire in her blue eyes, I was off my stool the next second. My boots slammed against the wooden floor with each quick stride.
“Come on, don’t be like that, baby.”
I wrapped my thick fingers around the back of the asshole’s neck who was crowding Caradee and yanked, putting distance between him and my friend, who still glared up at him like she wasn’t five foot two and barely weighed over a hundred pounds. The asshole stumbled, feet desperately trying to keep up as I hauled him backward.
