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“You think you’ve switched off what you feel, but you haven’t,” Easton murmured.
He wheeled up to the gas pump and jumped out of the truck. I shoved open the door, desperate to get out of the confines of the cab. Couldn’t switch it off? Bullshit.
I rounded the back of the truck and got in his face. “I don’t have to switch my feelings off because I don’t have any toward you.”
His expression softened, like he felt sorry for me. “Then why are you out here making sure I know just how much you don’t feel about me?”
I stomped off, my equivalent of running from a situation I didn’t like. The bell above the door to the old service station jingled when I pushed inside. I went straight for the Icee machine.
I yanked a large cup off the stack. When I got to New York, my number-one objective was to put as much distance between Easton and me as possible. We needed to work together, but I’d have to figure a way to do it as briefly as I could.
“Aunt Mulaney? I was only giving you a hard time. Everybody loves you the best.” Leona’s soft voice came from behind me.
I spun around. “I’m not upset with you. I just—” Damn it. Maybe Easton was right. I couldn’t simply turn off my emotions, whatever they may be. “You want an Icee?”
I handed her a cup before she could answer and let her go first.
“You’re tough as nails,” I said. Her hand slipped off the lever on the drink machine. “The way you handled today, there’s not a more difficult situation to be in, and you faced it without flinching.”
She mashed a dome lid on the cup, refusing to look up. Under the curtain of her light brown hair, her nose and cheeks had turned red. If I made her cry in the middle of the filling station, I’d kick my own ass . . . twice.
“I thought the mighty Jacobs were all about family on the holidays.”
Nails on a chalkboard, a sharp stick in the eye, a hole in the head—anything—would have been preferable to running into the person who owned that voice. It was like I’d entered a time machine and was seventeen all over again. Same place. Same person. Same hurt.
Only the pain was worse because it had had so long to fester. I faced Bryce Green for the first time in a few years. Fresh humiliation and anger sliced through me when I saw him. The last time we’d been in the filling station together I’d confronted him about cheating on me. He was in the exact same casual stance, like he didn’t give a damn about anything. Because he didn’t.
“Pretty obvious I’m with my family,” I finally said as I fought to regain control of my scattered emotions. The very same ones I’d mastered to avoid feeling exactly as I did now.
Leona fumbled several straws onto the floor as she tried to grab one.
“Haven’t seen you around much.” Bryce shifted his attention to my niece. “You know, I just knew you and Luke were going to work out. Damn shame it didn’t.”
I looked back and forth between them. “What’s he talking about?” I demanded, the empty cup in my hand crushing under my grip.
“We were almost family, Mulaney. I thought for sure in a few years we’d be coming out to the Jacobs castle for Christmas,” Bryce sneered.
No. This asshole’s son couldn’t be the one who had hurt Leona. What kind of cruel twist of fate was this?
“As I recall, you did come over one Christmas Eve. You puked up moonshine on Ruby’s nativity scene.” That had been before he’d taken my heart and stomped on it. I’d been fearless and had let myself be vulnerable, a mistake I’d never repeated.
He gripped the can of dip in his hand. “Turns out it’s a good thing my boy got away from the likes of you. His new girlfriend is a looker.”
“Excuse me.” Leona abandoned her drink and bolted for the door of the convenience store.
Easton caught her as he came inside.
“You keep your son the hell away from my niece.” I shoved my finger into Bryce’s chest. The anger I’d been holding inside bubbled to get out in my words.
“Luke never would’ve noticed her if I hadn’t pointed her out.” His sinister smile sent a shiver down my spine. “All he needed was a little nudge.”
He moved my hand, and I balled it at my side. “She’s innocent.”
“But you’re not.”
I took a step back as if he’d doused me in Icee the same as I’d done to him in this very spot when we were teenagers.
“Are you seeing Becky?”I screamed as another fissure tore through my heart.
