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"Something did come up." Knox appreciated both Keaton's and his brother’s help, but he was a grown man and did not owe them any explanation for where he’d gone.
"What came up?" Ford followed up, and Knox knew his brother wasn’t going to drop it.
"I was, um, helping out a friend." Unfortunately, Knox wasn’t sure if he could even call her that at this point. He hadn’t meant to fuck things up with her. Initially, he’d thought she was overreacting over him silencing her phone, but after a few days of stewing in his loneliness, he’d realized that she was right. He shouldn’t have silenced her phone.
Apologizing wasn’t the easiest thing for him to do, but he thought that in this case he was going to need to swallow his pride and tell her that he was wrong and sorry.
Knox was used to taking charge. Taking care of things and people. But he had no right to do that with Laura. She wasn’t his girlfriend. She wasn’t anything.
"Does this friend own the Snack Shack and bear a striking resemblance to Sofia Vergara?" Ford followed up.
"If you knew where I was, why didn’t you just come out and say it?"
His brother had never been coy or beat around the bush.
Ford’s shoulders dropped slightly when Knox called him out. "I think this fucking town is rubbing off on me."
Keaton and Knox both laughed.
"How did you know where I was?" Knox asked.
"You got pizza delivered by Fiona’s boyfriend."
Right. This town was the size of a postage stamp, and of course Knox couldn’t be MIA for a few days without everyone in town knowing about it.
"Laura’s sisters and their husbands all got the flu, and she ended up with eight kids." Knox explained. "I stopped by because of an apartment thing and stayed and helped out."
Keaton smiled widely. "That’s veryfriendlyof you."
Knox shrugged. "Yeah, this town must be rubbing off on me too."
Once Ford had made his point that he’d known Knox had been at Laura’s, the conversation turned to Keaton and whether or not he was going to return to The Octagon to compete. He’d been approached for a fight with a big payday.
Knox was half listening as his older brother and cousin discussed the opportunity that Keaton had been offered to compete again. Normally, this would be a topic Knox would be fully invested in. He loved MMA and was ridiculously proud of how far his cousin had taken his career.
But Knox was in his own head as his brother and cousin talked. He was wondering if his cousin considering going back into the sport, had anything to do with his ex getting engaged. If he’d moved to Whisper Lake to prove to her that he could settle down and was willing to give up his career, then it made sense that he’d consider going back to it now that she had officially moved on.
The fact that Keaton had been willing to give up the sport, or at least competing in the sport, for a woman had Knox wondering what he would give up for a woman. Not just any woman, but Laura. He’d been fucking miserable since she’d kicked him out and told him that they were done.
This past week, he’d started questioning everything he’d thought he wanted in his life. For the past two decades, he’d been waiting for the day when he’d have no one to answer to. No responsibilities. Freedom to go where he wanted, when he wanted, for as long as he wanted.
Now he had all those luxuries, and he felt...empty. Lonely. Lost.
All he could think about was Laura. He wanted to be with her. Not even to have sex, although he had to admit he missed that part of their relationship. But mostly, he just missed her. He missed the way her lips twitched in the corners right before she smiled. The way she always woke up with a crease on her cheek. The golden flecks that floated in her hazel eyes. The melodic sound of her laughter.
He missed the way she scrunched her nose when she was trying to figure something out. He missed the way her curves melted against his body when he pulled her into his arms. He missed the way her breath felt on his neck when she nuzzled into his shoulder.
He missed her.
His time in Whisper Lake was running out. He’d already wasted a week of her being mad at him. If she really didn’t want to see him anymore, then he would have to deal with that. But he’d only accept that was the case after he apologized.
Which was what he was going to do. He was going to go straight to her house after this and tell her that he was sorry. His only hope was that the time they’d spent apart had been even a quarter as hard on her as it had been on him. If she even felt ten percent as miserable as he’d been, then she would forgive him. She’d have to.
* * *
Laura took a deep breath as she walked up the steps of the community center for the Needlepoint Mafia knitting club meeting. She’d been avoiding seeing and talking to her family for the past week. She was trying to recover from the biggest heartbreak of her life, and she couldn’t have any witnesses to her emotional state. No one except Kennedy had even known that she was seeing someone, much less that she’d fallen in love and then broken things off. Unfortunately, her bestie was out of town at a conference, so she’d had no one to talk to about what she was going through.
All she wanted to do was go home, crawl in bed, pull the covers over her face, and hide. But she feared that if she didn’t show up tonight, there would be retribution of some kind.
