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I heard the boys chattering this morning as they left with their papaw, but I fought the urge to look out the window. My heart couldn’t take seeing them and not being able to go to them and get a hug. I know it’s best to avoid them. I’m sure Chase would have lots to say if I tried to approach them. I don’t know that he’d make any kind of excuse about why I’m gone, but I’d sell my soul to the devil himself to never have to see the same disappointment in their eyes that they have for their own mother. She let them down so many times, they no longer even acknowledge her unless they’re told to do so. I’ll become just one more person in their lives they know they can’t depend on.
Pain and heartache bubbles up my throat and escapes in the form of a sob. It takes half an hour at the community park for me to get myself back under control.
There are no cars outside of Adalynn’s bakery when I pull up, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t anyone inside. People around here walk more than they drive, and the sun is hitting it in a way that all I can see is the reflection of my car rather than inside to know what I’m facing before I pull open the door.
I need caffeine, and I’ll be damned if I show my face in The Brew and Chew any time soon.
With a sigh of defeat, I climb out of the car and head to the front door of Fondante’s Inferno.
“Mr. and Mrs. Fisher,” I say with a quick nod to the couple walking down the sidewalk.
Abraham Fisher, the town mayor who is always running for office, gives me a wide grin, but his wife isn’t as receptive. The mean woman glares at me as if I’ve somehow personally wronged her. As sure as I was that Chase wasn’t the type of man to bad mouth me, the look she gives me makes me wonder if he’s changed so much that he’s been talking trash about me behind my back. There’s no telling what he might’ve said to whoever would listen last night after I left the bar.
I wish I’d never fucking met you.
His words from last night have played on repeat inside my head since he spoke them with such vitriol.
I step to the side so the Fishers can pass without having to slow their stride before pulling open the door to the bakery. As if by some miracle, or maybe fate has decided I’ve had enough punishment for a while, there’s no one else inside but Adalynn behind the counter, wiping down one of the machines.
She grins at me over her shoulder, that same smile she gives to every customer that walks in, only when she sees it's me, it slides from her face.
“Give me just a minute,” Adalynn says as she continues to clean. “I had a mishap this morning.”
I take a seat at the counter, wondering if Chase is more like Sam than I allowed myself to believe. Turning people against me was Sam’s specialty. He was so good at it that there was no one left to speak to before I left Austin. It took me a long time to realize all the people in my life were people he put in my path. He gave them to me, and when he decided he’d had enough, he took them back.
It’s hard to keep my head up under what feels like the weight of the world, but I’m fully in a fake-it-until-I-make-it position right now. I stiffen my back as I wait for my friend, but those emotions threaten to bubble right back up the second she turns to me with a sad smile.
“Are you okay?”
“What have you heard?” I manage to ask, my tone as flat as I can handleright now.
“You mean what the town has heard?”
I tilt my head in confusion.
Adalynn pulls her phone from her pocket, and after typing in a few things, my phone chimes.
Dread begins to settle inside of me long before I can click on the link.
“Are they already gossiping about me in the Lindell social media group?”
“It’s a little worse than that,” Adalynn says, a cringe distorting her pretty face.
My hand trembles as I pull up the article she sent. As the website populates, I’m reminded why I rarely get online anymore.
I swipe past pictures and clips, too scared to click on them.
Guilt swims inside of me for all the times I eagerly read stories about celebrities and how much I’ve been a part of the problem when some salacious news came out about someone in the limelight.
“What?” I whisper when I finally get the courage to hit the triangle on the video.
My voice, low and whispered, fills the small bakery, and I’m grateful it’s only the two of us because what I’m saying is too personal to ever have been spoken out loud. I knew better when I was doing it, but I said those things in confidence to my friend.
I look over my shoulder to the now empty spot.
“Yep,” Adalynn says. “I already checked and the woman that was sitting there is a social media vlogger. I have no idea how she picked up that entire conversation, but she did.”
I click on the woman’s name, just to verify, and there she is, smiling back at me from her headshot on the gossip website’s online page.
