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All right, they had shown up at the diner for breakfast together. But hey, they had spent the night together. It was just it wasn’t like that.
It was frustrating. Knowing that everyone in town basically assumed that she and Jace were sleeping together, when they absolutely weren’t.
She wanted the diner to be a normalizing moment, and in many ways, she supposed that it was, since these kinds of speculative looks were normal for them. It was just that... She wanted to not think about him that way. And there was a strange kind of intimacy that seemed to linger between them after last night.
They sat down at the booth, and Rosemary handed them the menus. “Coffee?”
“Yes,” they both said at the same time.
“I have a bastard of a headache,” said Jace.
“You weren’t even that drunk,” she pointed out.
“It’s that sugary girlie wine,” he said. “I can drink Jack Daniel’s and feel nothing the next day.”
“So what you’re telling me, is that you’re not man enough for girls’ night.”
“I am not,” he said.
“Maybe your toxic masculinity is protecting you.”
“I would maintain that,” he said.
A few moments later, their coffee arrived.
“Do you need a minute?” Rosemary asked.
“No,” said Jace. “Bacon and eggs. Over medium. Hash browns, sourdough toast.”
“Same.”
Rosemary nodded, then left, and both she and Jace lifted their coffee mugs up and took long drinks.
As soon as that first hit of caffeine touched her soul, she started to feel slightly more human.
“I want to invest in the hotel.”
“What?”
“I was thinking. After we talked last night, about the trust fund, and all of that... I want to invest in the hotel.”
“You want to invest in the hotel. And when you say that, you mean you actually want to do this, and this isn’t you doing some kind of misguided older brother thing?”
She was trying to sort through the tangle of feelings that this offer brought up. There was a certain measure of relief, because having some extra financial support—especially considering that there was clearly a raccoon porthole somewhere—was great. And certainly offered her a little bit of reassurance. But then also, if he remembered that conversation from last night...
Of course, that conversation had only been a couple sips of wine in, and it had come before all the raccoon stuff, way before, meaning she hoped that what had come right before the raccoon stuff, had been swallowed up by both that and the wind.
“So you want to... You want to throw backing behind this?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I do need something that I believe in. That I want to invest in. Why not the town?”
“I just can’t escape the feeling that actually what you’re doing is acting like a mother hen.”
“I prefer older brother.”
Oh well. He might as well have just taken the butter knife next to his right hand and stabbed her in the heart. Done a little dance around her body as she bled out for good measure.
“I don’t need an older brother,” she said, her tone crisp. “Thank you. A friend, who sees me as an equal, sure.”
