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He stares into my eyes for a moment, and it takes all my willpower to hold his gaze. It feels important, though, like I need to prove to him that I mean it. That by meeting his eyes, he’ll know I’m serious.
It breaks my heart when I realize I’m right. His shoulders drop as his lips pinch, and he gives me a sharp nod. The hardness in his body remains, but he backs away from me. His eyes grow hard. “Fine. If that’s what you want.”
“It is,” I answer, more to convince myself than to convince him.
When he flinches, I regret my words. All I can do is nod before I slip past him.
Once outside the bathroom, my mother is the first one to notice something’s wrong. I mumble a few words about not feeling well, and she lets me go. Agnes is the next to accost me, and she tells me all went well with the audit. She says something about saving her thousands in back taxes, but the words sound all fuzzy. I can’t focus. I just nod.
Candice walks me to the door and tries to meet my gaze, but I just wave her off. I’m already inside my car when Trina comes rushing out to knock on my window.
As soon as it lowers, she leans into the car. “You good?”
“Just feeling a bit under the weather,” I tell her, and it’s mostly the truth.
She searches my face for a moment, then nods. “You need me to come with you to any doctors’ appointments? My schedule is flexible. I’ll make time.”
I start shaking my head, then pause. These past few weeks have felt good to have people around, to be able to lean on my family. So, instead of refusing, I nod at my sister. “Yeah. I’ll let you know.”
As my sister watches me for a moment, I try not to squirm. Then gives me a sharp jerk of her chin. “Good. Get some sleep.”
When I back the car out of its parking space and get on the road that heads home, I let out a long sigh of relief.
I did the right thing. Even if Rudy had convinced himself he wanted to pursue something with me, he would’ve regretted it. I saved us both a mountain of heartache.
I’m better off without him—and he’s definitely better off without me.
CHAPTER 24
Rudy
It shouldn’t bother me. It shouldn’t.
I’ve known the woman, what, a few weeks? Before that, I met her once at a Thanksgiving dinner years ago? Why do I care that she broke things off? We went on a couple of dates. Spent one night together. Big deal.
I should be thanking her for breaking things off. She did me a favor.
My fingers drum on my steering wheel as I make my way back to town, taking a circuitous route home—and I realize with a start that my path will take me past Lily’s house.
Am I a stalker now? What the hell am I doing?
Shaking my head, I turn off on the next cross street and head straight home.
The housewarming party was fine. It would have been fun if I didn’t have acid boiling in my stomach. I must have done a decent job of faking it after Lily left, though, because no one said anything to me about it. Not even my grandmother.
When I make it home, the old house feels drafty and cold. I keep the lights off and toss my shoes on the mat by the door, then pad toward the back of the house. When I pass my office, I see my laptop on my desk. Too wound up to do anything else, I power up my computer and decide to do some work.
There’s an email waiting for me when I turn the laptop on. It’s from Georgia Neves, who wants to introduce me to a friend of hers who’s interested in buying a property in Heart’s Cove. She’s a shameless flirt, even over email. She insists on introducing us in person, preferably over a meal. Her treat.
Having interacted with Georgia a lot over the past couple of weeks, I know she flirts out of some sort of habit. She’s mentioned her divorce a few times and isn’t quite able to hide the pain in her eyes when she does. I don’t think she’s actually interested in me. She just uses sex and flirtation as a defense mechanism.
The email shouldn’t make me feel bitter. It should make me want to return her flirtation, should make me want to fall into bed with her, because I need to shore up my defenses as much as she does—but all I want to do is find Lily and let me clear those shadows from her gaze. I have this undeniable urge to protect Lily from whatever’s bothering her. I want to be the knight in shining armor for her dark and twisted fairy tale.
It’s only when I’ve been sitting in front of a blank screen for the better part of an hour that I give up on work. I leave the email unanswered, marking it on my to-do list for Monday. I rub my stinging eyes and let out a sigh, tipping my head back to stare at the ceiling.
Lily got under my skin. Somehow, between fish and chips and a crushed champagne fountain, Lily burrowed into a part of me that hasn’t been touched in a long time.
After my ex left me and took the daughter I thought of as my own, I shut a part of myself away. I vowed to never let someone hurt me the way she did. I told myself to live in the moment, to live for me. What use is it giving my all to someone, only to have it thrown back in my face?
