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Mack scoffs. “Then you forgot what she did to you. She’s always been really good at messing with your head.” She looks at me. “Come on, Emmy. Suddenly, I’m not hungry.”
She storms out, leaving me standing there, staring at Owen, wishing I had the right words.
We look at one another, and we both take a breath at the same time.
“Sorry about. . .that. Talk some sense into her, will ya?” he says.
“She’s just worried about you,” I say.
He blows out a breath. “It wasn’t even. . .” He stops, trying to find the right words. “She was just—”
I hold up a hand to stop him from telling me anything about Lindsay because the truth is, I can’t let myself care about this. “It’s your life, Owen. I’ll talk to you later.”
I walk out onto the sidewalk and find Mack standing there, stewing.
“What in the world was that about?” I ask. “Don’t you think that was a little over the top?”
Mack crosses her arms over her chest. That classic Larrabee temper often gets the better of her, and she’s fiercely protective of the people she loves—which is one reason I never told her about my friendship with her brother—but this was next level.
“You were there, Emmy,” she says, voice shaking from coming off a heated argument. “You saw what Lindsay did to him.”
“Half the town saw,” I say. “But it’s been a long time. We’re all adults now. Shouldn’t we move on?”
“Because of what that woman did, Owen has never been the same. Never.” In this moment, I can see just how much she cares for him.
I do too, unfortunately.
We start walking down Elm Street, back in the direction of Book Smart. We’ll inevitably end up eating day-old pastries for dinner, which, if I’m honest, is 100% fine with me.
A pecan braid softened in the microwave. Dangerous.
She continues. “It took him a year to snap out of the funk he was in, and even after that, he was. . .just. . .different. Owen was always rebellious, but when he loves someone, he’s all in.”
I smirk at her. “Must run in the family.”
“Yeah, but Em, that stopped after Lindsay,” she says.
I frown. “What do you mean?”
“After her, he moved away and hardly talked to any of us anymore. He didn’t call, he didn’t text. He really hasn’t dated anyone—won’t date anyone—seriously since. She did that to him.” She stops and looks at me. “She took my brother away.”
“I don’t think it’s as bad as all that, Mack,” I tell her. “He seems the same to me. Mostly.”
“You didn’t really know him, Emmy,” she says. “He’s different now.”
I chew the inside of my cheek, pondering what I’m about to say, then decide to take a leap. “I did know him, though.”
I stuff my hands in my coat pockets, remembering how it felt the last time I told someone the truth about my feelings. The timing, I realize now, was terrible, and it led to the worst rejection of my life.
Mack might be really angry with me for keeping this from her all these years. But somehow, once he moved away and she saw him less, confessing it didn’t seem to matter anymore.
“What are you talking about?”
“I wasn’t just his tutor,” I say on a sigh.
She stops dead in her tracks.
“Emmy, if you tell me you slept with Owen, I’m going to go back to DeLucca’s and maim my brother. And then I’m going to maim you. Then I’m going back to maim him again, just to be sure.”
