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He snorts. “Thanks. Not being at my girlfriend’s funeral looks good on me.” He grabs Axel’s shirt and tugs him from our table. “Let’s go, pimp. She’s busy.”
“Hannah!”
I firm my lips and turn my attention to Thomas while the other two men struggle their way through the restaurant, out the door, onto the sidewalk outside, then into the truck I knew,I knew,I saw earlier.
My heart does somersaults in my stomach, and my pulse thunders so I can barely hear anything else. Not the soft music playing through the speakers, and not the chatter of diners who got a show from the two meathead firefighters who are, officially, back in town.
Thomas’ green eyes no longer hold the kindness they did earlier, but rather, a distrustful envy that makes my throat dry. And like the universe wants to be cruel, our server sashays her way closer and sets down a bowl of pasta I have no desire to eat.
“Ex-boyfriend, I assume.” Like we’re discussing profit-and-loss statements, and not the man I once thought I would grow old with, Thomas unravels his cutlery while I still hold on to my weapon.
Er, my butter knife.
“Ex-friend,” I rasp, my voice no longer commanding, now that Axel is gone. “Um… he wasn’t my boyfriend, exactly. Just a friend.”
“Did you sleep together?”
My eyes snap up and stop on his. “Not an appropriate question to ask someone you’ve just met.”
He chuckles low in the back of his throat. “And yet, you’ve answered it without answering.”
Digging his fork into the pasta and spinning until it collects enough spaghetti to fill his mouth, he studies me with none of the warmth he expressed earlier. “Not gonna lie and say that wasn’t awkward. But I’m man enough and mature enough to accept we all have a past. So let’s get back to the present. Do you want me to ask them to box up your dinner, you can go home, and we’ll call this quits? Or,” he shovels more food in andhss-hss-hsses around boiling pasta, “do you want a reset? We go back to the flirting thing, I get you a fresh glass of wine, since yourfriendmade the first completely ineffectual. We can start again and—”
But I don’t get to hear the rest of his offer, because fire alarms ring out throughout the restaurant, and a second later, the sprinklers flick on so water rains from the ceiling and lands on my head with heavy splats.
While everyone else in the restaurant jumps up, waving arms and squealing like we’re all actively on fire, I sit in my booth and fold my arms. My bottom lip falls heavy, and my temper burns deep in my stomach.
Fuck Axel Feeney.
When he dumped me seven months ago, he made me doubt, for the first time in my life, my value and self-confidence. So if he thinks he can come back now and demand my attention, he has an unpleasant surprise coming for him.
My fist slamming into his face, and my words breaking him, the way his broke me.
Fuck him.
Fuck his possessive attitude.
And fuck these sprinklers, ruining the hair I spent an hour working on before I came out tonight.
Axel
TAKING A SH#T IS INEVITABLE
Nerves batter inside my stomach like the angry wings of a wasp on cocaine as I pull my truck up outside the home I practically live in half the time when I’m in town.
Nerves not only for Hannah, whose words and dismissal were like tiny knives shoved beneath my nails and twisted each time I took a breath, but for Nicole too. Because I left her, just as surely as I left Hannah.
I took what was practically a perfect co-parenting relationship, as we both worked hard to raise my beautiful niece, and threw it in her face to deal with all alone while I escaped to another state to slog through my feelings.
Myfucking feelings! Like they were more important than everyone else’s.
Nicole’s abusive ex-husband was no longer in the picture, compounding trauma in her and June’s lives, and Preston was on the scene, taking care of them both with as much care and patience as I could have ever hoped for in the man who would eventually step into that role. So those were my excuses to leave.
Nicole was okay, and Hannah needed me to be gone, if only so she could move on.
But now I’m back, everyone is doing exactly what I thought they should—moving on—and here I am, unwelcome at one table, and terrified I’ll be booted from a second.
I have no one to blame but myself. But acknowledging I’m an asshole doesn’t take the sting away. Nor does it remove the devastating pain of knowing Hannah is on a date with someone else tonight.
