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“And washi tape,” I blabbered. “And premium paper. And stencils. And—”
Fuck, Donovan. Shut up!
Shutting up would be good.Reallygood.
But I found I couldn’t.
“And I’m left-handed,” I said, “so most planners don’t work well for me. The rings and coils get in the way, so when I found this one”—I quickly stepped back, grabbed one of the notebooks from the brand I preferred—“I was in love. I can take the pages out and put them back in. And don’t get me started on pens. I have so many different kinds and—”
“What time do you go home, sweetheart?”
Rosie. Sweetheart.
Not harpy. Going in for the kill by keeping me off-kilter.
I couldn’t take it—the gentle, the questions, the concern.Rosie.
I inhaled, exhaled, buried the yearning, the pain.
Then I did something stupid.
I went to the couch and grabbed my jacket, the one I’d set on the bag of clothes I’d bought after all of mine had burned up. The bag I purposely kept covered so that no one knew I was living out of a duffle bag.
But I didn’t have time to worry about that.
I was too busy being stupid.
I shrugged into my jacket, bent over my desk, and grabbed my backpack, hauling the packed canvas—full of pens and stickers and washi and more notebooks and backup chargers and a dozen other items Imightneed—over the top of my desk. I clutched it to me like it was a life preserver and I needed it to survive the sinking of the Titanic.
Then I marched to the door of my office.
And marched along the hall.
And I marched down the trailer’s stairs.
I jammed supplies into my backpack before quickly yanking the zippers closed, ignoring their protesting groans.
My keys were—luckily—in my jacket pocket, so I tugged them out and kept marching.
Around the corner of the rink and to my car, tossing, “Lock that door for me,” over my shoulder to the big, hulking hockey player who’d followed in my wake of marching and jamming.
I relaxed—slightly—after I heard the lockclickand the trailer’s door slam closed.
But not completely, because there was a beat of quiet and then footsteps trailed me across the lot. My own personal big, hulking hockey player shadow.
Perfect.
I wasn’t going to let myself stop being stupid. Nope. In typical Billie Rose fashion, I was going to see this through to the end.
My lights flashed as I bleeped my locks and I yanked open the passenger side door, dumping my backpack onto the seat. Then I rounded the hood and moved to the driver’s side door. More yanking commenced, along with more dumping—though this time it was dumping my ass into the seat before I strapped myself and jabbed at the button to start up the ignition.
Only then did I allow myself to connect eyes with the big, hulking hockey player.
“Thisis the time I go home.”
Then I slammed the door, peeled out of the parking lot, and took off down the road.
Driving into the night and doing it pretending that I was driving home.
