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I still swooned over the memory of Owen sweeping in and decking AJ. Any time he stopped by to pick up Reid or bring her coffee and a Death By Chocolate muffin, I could barely make eye contact with him. He didn’t post any of hisreadings anymore on social media. But sometimes Reid would play the one she saved from the first time she ever heard his voice.
Lucky girl. And Owen was even luckier. Reid had the biggest heart of anyone I’d ever met. She deserved to be loved and taken care of by someone who wasn’t a sleaze ball.
Jessa threw her hands in the air. “You are so lucky Reid is off, playing hide the eggplant with Owen somewhere in the mountains for the week,” she grumbled as she straightened a few of the dresses draped on delicate hangers mounted on the new antique hooks that Jessa and I just installed. With a satisfied nod, she spun to face me, finger wagging. “When she gets back, we are going out. With Kylie, and Alex, and Gia.”
I groaned. Not because I didn’t love Reid’s older sister and silent partner in the vintage couture boutique I’d worked at since it opened. Alex and her best friend Gia were amazing, too.
Almost too amazing.
Kylie owned an open wheel race team with her husband, which was how she knew Alex Anders and Gia. Alex’s dad was a racing legend.
Next to them, I felt like I hadn’t accomplished anything.
Until a few weeks ago, when Reid asked if I would help her and Kylie with the annual fundraiser for Kylie’s foundation. Domestic violence, unfortunately, was something I became far too familiar with in the last few years.
The bad boy musician who noticed me one night when his band played at a club just outside the small-ish town I lived and worked in.
I should’ve listened to Jessa when she said he was bad news, but the rush that made my body tingle at beingthegirl the hot, tatted up lead singer of a rock band noticed outweighed my common sense.
But I didn’t. And slowly, he stripped me of the friendsthat I used to go out with, the independence I worked so hard for when I moved across the country to the town I fell in love with when I applied for the internship at the local football team.
The one he made me quit because it meant I could spend more time watching him practice, or fawn over him at shows at local clubs or ones a few hours away.
Magpie Dreams had been my once a week haven, and even then, he tried to make me quit until I begged Reid to let me work around his schedule.
I was such a fool.
One morning I woke up and no longer recognized the person I saw in the mirror.
Where once was a girl who decided to move across the country, away from family and the only friends I knew, and chase a dream, a hollow-eyed stranger stared back at me.
That was the night that AJ had what he said was the most important show of his life, because there was a scout supposedly coming to see the band.
Little did he know, they weren’t there for him. But that’s another story. And in fact, after that night, I planned on never being there for him again.
The subtle, then not so subtle hints that I was fat, that no one would want a girl like me, and the angry outbursts where I’d cower in the bathroom while he broke something else by throwing it at the locked door separating us had finally knocked sense into me.
That day, terrified of how he would react when I told him I was leaving him, I went to work at Magpie with the two women who had become a source of strength for me again, even if they didn’t know it.
Until he showed up as we were closing up for the night, in a murderous rage because he said I was running late.
Thank God Owen had gone all stalkery on Reid.
If he hadn’t shown up when he did…
I shuddered. Jess eyed me.
“You ok?”
I nodded, and smiled. “I really am. But, I don’t need to get laid.”
“Hmph,” she scoffed. “Weallneed to get laid. I just admit it out loud more often than the next person.”
“And the next,” I teased in a dry tone.
She flicked her hair over her shoulder and shrugged. Hands on her hips, she glanced around and nodded. “I love it. Reid will love it.”
“I already sent her a picture,” I laughed, imagining Reid eyeing her phone the last few days and yet, I knew she needed the getaway.
