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FIVE
Hanna
I needed to stop watching the news.
Not even the good stuff in the final segment was going to be good enough to make me feel better about all of the bad that came before. This morning’s news was the worst I’d ever heard.
Granted, the news two weeks ago had come as a shock, and I’d told myself I wasn’t going to be upset over the death of someone who’d hurt me the way Jimmy had.
Murder was bad.
Awful.
But I wholeheartedly believed in karma, and there was a big part of me that trusted what happened to Jimmy was something that he’d had coming to him.
But this?
This was not that.
I’d returned to my place just a little while ago after having gone to The Early Bird this morning, a trip that hadn’t gone anything like I’d anticipated it would. I had expected I’d go in, just like I frequently did, grab a dozen doughnuts for the front desk and a coffee for myself and Darryl, and that would be the end of it.
I was wrong.
I’d gotten a whole lot more than I bargained for when I ran into Leo.
It still blew my mind that he’d remembered my name. I had no idea how that was possible when we’d only met each other once before in a very short encounter, and that had been weeks ago.
Then again, I hadn’t forgotten his name either, so maybe that said something.
Today had been awful, though.
I knew I made a fool of myself, but I couldn’t seem to help it.
Ever since… well, for years, I’d found it especially difficult to talk to men, and someone like Leo made it even more difficult.
Actually, it wasn’t someone like Leo. It was just Leo.
I couldn’t deny how handsome he was.
His lips.
God, I loved his lips.
And considering I hadn’t looked at a man and felt any sort of attraction at all in years, it was throwing me a bit off balance that I was seeing Leo through that lens.
While I was at the coffee shop, I had tried my best to ignore how tall he was, how strong he looked, how his dark brown eyes had me mesmerized, and how the sound of his voice was oddly comforting. I also made a valiant effort not to look at his mouth.
But it hadn’t been easy.
And all I wanted to do was come back here to Short and Sweet,the tiny home community where I lived and the place I owned, so I could try to process my feelings about the encounter I’d had with Leo this morning.
Sadly, it seemed I wasn’t going to get the opportunity to do anything about that, because I did what I always liked to do.
I turned on the news.
But not once in a million years would I have ever imagined I’d see what I saw today. As I stood there, staring at the screen, and listening to the words being spoken, I only felt disbelief.
Because another man had been murdered. Only this time, I didn’t feel so relieved. This time, I was feeling the exact opposite of that, because the man who’d been murdered was Xavier Murray, Saul’s son.
