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If.The girl still wasn’t sure whether she believed him, and the last thing he wanted to do was sit awkwardly with her in the living room waiting for Olivia to come home. Fortunately, downtown wasn’t that big. “I’ll go find her. If she comes home beforehand, tell her to call me.”
Without waiting for Riley’s answer, he headed down the stairs and returned to his truck.
For perhaps the first time in his life, Carson was glad that Lark Springs didn’t have much of a downtown. Basically four streets. She’d be on one of them.
It didn’t take him long to find her car parked outside of the building supply store. Even better, she was standing by her car, loading things into it. Her movements were determined and forceful, her back stiff.
She caught sight of him and her eyes narrowed into angry slits. She turned back to her cart. Honestly, didn’t the woman believe in explanations?
Well, he wasn’t going to let her run off again without listening to him. He pulled his truck up behind her, boxing her in so that she couldn’t leave. Then he killed the engine and got out.
She cast him a cool glance. “That’s an illegal parking job.”
He stepped over to her. “You know me—in trouble with the law since our junior year.”
She huffed to show him that she wasn’t amused.
He motioned to her car. “What are you doing here?”
She hefted a paint can from her shopping cart. “Mrs. Gordon didn’t like the wall color, just like I said. And even though you haven’t been honest with me, I promised to help you with your stupid house, and so I got you the right color paint so it will look better.” She thunked the paint can into the back of her trunk. “Benjamin Moore Muslin. You’re welcome.”
He took another step closer. “Megan isn’t my girlfriend. I broke up with her nearly three weeks ago. This has all been a misunderstanding, and I am sorry you got hurt because of it.” The need to comfort her made him reach out his arms, an invitation to hug her.
Instead of coming to him, she picked up a paint stick from her cart and brandished it like it was a weapon. “Well, for a woman who isn’t your girlfriend, she took a lot of effort to visit you.”
He dropped his arms and sighed. “She wanted to rekindle the romance. I turned her down.”
Olivia’s jaw was still tight. Suspicious. “Her social media is plastered with pictures of the two of you, and she says she’s in a relationship with the world’s best football player.”
This seemed to hold more weight for her than his words. “I can’t control what my ex-girlfriend puts on social media.” He pulled his phone from his pocket. “Look, I can prove that I broke up with her.” He brought up the text thread with Megan where he’d ended things and handed the phone to Olivia. “Read this.”
Olivia tucked the paint stick under her arm and took the phone. As she read, her eyebrows drew together. “June ninth. That’s the day you kissed me.” Her eyes flicked to his then back to the phone. “Wait, you sent this messageafterwe kissed. So when you kissed me in the shower, you had a girlfriend? I was the other woman?”
That hadn’t been the response he’d wanted. “No,” he said quickly. “Megan ghosted me when I came up to Lark Springs in April. I’d known it was over between us for a long time. I just hadn’t made it official yet. I guess I was waiting to see how long she would go before responding and what excuse she’d come up with. Which, granted, sounds childish when I say it out loud. But the point is, I stopped thinking about her once you were around. After I kissed you, I remembered I hadn’t officially broken up with her and so I did.”
Olivia handed him back the phone. Her movements were still jerky with anger. “And when were you going to tell me that you were leaving for Denver? You’ve known since your last doctor’s appointment, but you told me nothing was certain.”
So Megan wasn’t the entire reason Olivia was angry with him. He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Nothingiscertain. Ninety players will be at the training camp and only fifty-three make the team. I won’t know until right before the season starts if they’ll want me on the team, or just on the practice team, or not at all.”
“You didn’t tell me any of that. You let me think you would be staying in Montana longer.”
She was right. He’d been putting off telling her. “I knew you wouldn’t be happy about it, so I was trying to figure out the right way to tell you. Clearly, this is not the right way.”
She pressed her lips together. Her crossed arms tightened as though she was trying to hold onto herself. “Were you even going to tell me goodbye or were you just going to text me a breakup message like you did to Megan?”
He groaned. This was what she’d been afraid of all along—him leaving and forgetting about her, and now she was certain it was going to happen. “I wasn’t planning on breaking up with you at all. People have long-distance relationships. I thought we could too.”
She looked down at the ground. “Through text, then.”
His hands came out of his pockets and went into the air. “You think I’m lying about my feelings for you? Why would I do that?”
She swallowed. She could barely look at him. “I don’t think you’re lying. I think you’re trying to spare my feelings, but I don’t want to have my expectations raised just to have them dashed. Look, I understood from the beginning that this might happen. Relationships form and then things change and people leave. That’s the way life is.”
That was an overly pessimistic view of life. But he understood why she had it. “You’re talking about your father.”
Her eyes flashed to him, surprised by his words.
He nodded, more certain he was right. “Your father took off, and now you don’t think men stick around.”
