Chapter 3
Chapter Three
GIA
I eased onto the edge of the bed and set a fresh tumbler of ice water on the nightstand. The ice clinked together too loudly in the quiet room.
“Oh, hey. How’s my sister the vet doc today?” Misty dragged her tongue over her cracked lips, then swallowed like it scraped all the way down.
I grabbed the lip balm and pressed it into her hand, nodding toward the water. If I opened my mouth to speak, too much might come out.
“It was a day,” I settled on. “How about you?”
“The day after chemo is a bitch.” She smeared the balm across her lips, missing the corner the first time before correcting it, already reaching for the water tumbler.
“I threw up for hours. I thought I was going to pass out, but I took more meds. Now I can’t keep my eyes open.
” She let out a short, humorless laugh, then winced like even that cost her.
I stepped forward automatically when she struggled upright, but stopped myself mid-motion. My hands hovered uselessly in the air before I forced them back to my sides.
She noticed. Of course she did. “I’ve got it,” she muttered, softer than I expected. Not snapping. Just stubborn.
“I’m glad you’re here. Really. I know this…isn’t small.” Misty didn’t quite look at me when she said it, like meeting my eyes would make it too real. “Also glad you picked me up last week. I couldn’t have left on my own.”
I was furious at both of my parents for not helping Misty through her diagnosis or treatments. Since she was no longer able to do chores around the farm, they treated her like a defective puppy that needed to go off on its own and die.
“I glad you decided it best to leave.” I’d been sneaking on the farm to take her to treatments for three weeks.
She gave me a fragile smile, the kind that flickered in and out like it might not stick. “I haven’t had this much time to binge shows in my life.” A faint laugh followed. “Silver lining, right?”
“Yeah.” I fanned my shirt to get air moving, realizing it was stifling in this room. “It’s so hot in here. How can you be under all those blankets?”
“I think the A/C is out or something. I don’t notice, though. I’m always freezing these days.”
“I’ll check it later and call the landlord.” The rental house hadn’t been upgraded since the nineties. Many of the appliances were spotty, but it was what I could afford for the two of us.
Then, like it took effort to pivot, Misty asked, “Was it bad? Work, I mean.” Her eyes lifted to mine, a little unfocused but trying.
I hesitated.
“Tell me about it,” she said, nudging when I didn’t answer right away.
I dropped my gaze to my hands. It should’ve felt like an opening. It didn’t.
She clapped so suddenly that I jumped. “You saw him, didn’t you? Finally!” She waved me on, momentum taking over. “So? What do you think of grown-up Timothy Hurst?”
“His dog got a tail laceration.” That was a safe description of events. “He was…surprised to see me.”
My mouth pressed into a thin line. How did I explain that the air had shifted the second he walked in? That something I’d buried so deep I thought it was gone had ignited like it had been waiting?
Whatever we had years ago had been something softer than whatever the hell this seemed to be.
This was standing too close to a live wire and pretending I couldn’t feel the current crawling under my skin.
So, I did what I always did when faced with sharp feelings.
I shut it down. Locked it away. Pretended I didn’t feel anything.
His blue eyes had flicked to mine and then dropped.
Not subtle. Not accidental. He’d done a quick sweep that took me in.
Something in him reacted before he could stop it.
I caught the flash of surprise, and the sharp, almost disbelieving heat.
Then it hit me too—hot and electric. I’d been seen in a way I wasn’t ready for by the one man I was terrified to face.
He still had those long legs. Still so—
Nope. Absolutely not. I cut the thought off hard. It might burn me if I let it finish.
“That’s it? That’s all you have for me? He was surprised to see you?” She giggled, bright and sharp, like this was one of her K-dramas. “I’ll bet he shit a brick. A McClary on sacred Hurst turf. Considering you two used to be—”
“We weren’t anything.” The words came out too fast. Misty had caught me one day at the lake with him.
Of course my curious little sister followed me when I skipped school.
We had a huge fight about me meeting up with him.
She even accused me of screwing him to get back at Dad.
I denied it, and eventually she left it alone.
Until Dad got the secret out of her. Then things turned nasty, not that I blamed Misty. She’d gotten beaten over it too.
I hadn’t told anyone about those days at the lake, not my ex-husband, not Misty, and not the therapist I’d seen for a few years.
I never wanted to revisit those quiet, stolen pieces of time or the way silence with Timothy had felt safe.
Then things got complicated. They changed when he decided he wanted to save me. That he wanted me.
I shoveled the thoughts down before they could surface.
“All right.” Misty’s fingers worried the edge of her blanket, like she debated how much to say. “I’m not telling you this to stir anything up. You deserve to know what you walked away from and what you disappearing did to him.”
I stilled, every instinct in me going quiet except the one that leaned in.
My pulse kicked up, traitorous and eager.
Don’t stop, I wanted to say. Tell me everything.
I wanted to hear every rumor and every ugly little truth about Timothy Hurst. I needed to know what had shaped him into the man who could walk into a room and undo me without even trying.
It wasn’t just that he’d filled out. He’d grown into himself in a way that overwhelmed. The years had carved him into the kind of man you noticed whether you wanted to or not.
I didn’t want to notice. I wanted to look past him, through him, and pretend he didn’t land in my chest like a dropped weight.
It wasn’t the broad shoulders or the restrained confidence or the way he carried himself like he knew exactly where he stood that got to me.
It was the depth of distress and grief in his gaze that went far deeper than him despising the fact I was in his space.
Something in life had taken a blade to him and he’d learned how to keep standing anyway.
I couldn’t stop wondering what, beyond his youngest brother’s death and, perhaps, me leaving, had done that to him.
“After you left, he started bulldozing through life. He got mean about it. He ran people over to get his way and barely noticed who he hurt.” She paused, sounding tired clear down to her bones.
“Everyone knows his father’s heart attack dumped the dairy farm and HVAC business on him when he wasn’t even twenty.
It made him a driven asshole for years, but we all saw he got shit done.
He did very well for himself. Dad hated it.
” Her gaze lifted to mine. “But something about Timothy changed about three years ago. Maybe becoming a single dad. Maybe therapy. Maybe finally having someone besides himself to care about.” A faint shrug.
“I hear he can still be a nasty bastard sometimes.”
Good for him. I nodded even though the conversation was starting to feel like a door I didn’t want opened. I’d heard he had a daughter. I wondered if she was like him.
Misty studied me when I didn’t respond, something more careful settling into her expression.
“We don’t have to talk about it,” she said, quieter.
“I know I push.” A faint, almost apologetic smile flickered.
“Occupational hazard of being stuck in a bed with nothing but other people’s lives for entertainment.
Now, to be fair, you ran away and married someone who looks just like him. ”
“I did not.” My stomach twisted. “Justin is nothing like him.”
Misty was already pulling up a picture, shoving the phone toward me. “Bull. Shit.”
I didn’t look at the picture. If I looked, I’d see it—the overlap. The similar angles. A mistake—my mistake—wearing a different name. I’d get swamped in the pain of a marriage with so much distance and hurt that he turned to someone else more than once.
“So you have a type. Who cares?” There was no bite to it now, only her attempt to lighten things.
“I do not have a type.” I didn’t like thinking about either of them. It hurt too much. “Timothy Hurst is not, nor will he will ever be, my type.” I exhaled hard, trying to steady something inside me that had started to slip. “He was an absolute ass to me today.”
And Justin—
I cut that thought off before it could finish forming. The signed divorce papers sat like a weight in the back of my mind. Final. Done.
“Anything else exciting?” Misty asked, easing back against the pillows.
I latched onto the opening. “I’ve got a date tomorrow.”
Her eyes widened, cautious now. “Someone local?”
“Guy at the hardware store.” I shrugged, aiming for casual and landing somewhere short of it. “He helped me figure out what screw I needed for the blinds. Then he asked me out.”
“What’s his name?”
“Deck. Said he does home repair or something.”
Misty choked—actually choked—water going everywhere as she coughed and laughed at the same time.
“Oh my God—” she wheezed, then caught herself when she saw my face.
“Sorry.” She wiped her mouth, still grinning but trying to rein it in.
“It’s just—wow. You wouldn’t know Deck. He moved here about five years ago.
” She shook her head, then added, more carefully, “Ryan Decklan is Timothy Hurst’s right hand.
Deck does most of the heavy managing of Hurst HVAC now. ” A pause. “Are you okay with that?”
Of course Deck worked for Timothy. Of course. Why wouldn’t life throw more at me to make everything complicated?
A slow, dull pressure started behind my ribs, but I kept my face blank. Neutral. Manageable.
“He’s also kind of—” Misty cut herself off, eyes flicking over me like she was recalculating something. Then she grinned. “You know what? Go on that date. Absolutely go. I want a full report.”
“I’m going out with Deck,” I said evenly. “Not Timothy.” I held her gaze, needing her to hear the part underneath. “Timothy and I will figure out how to exist in the same town. I’m not leaving.”
Misty needed me here to get her through chemo and for as long as she survived. I couldn’t go down that mental path to the ending right now.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I added, quieter now. “Especially not if it means you end up back on the farm. You’re not going back there.”
Misty’s expression shifted, the humor draining out of it. She picked up her phone, thumb hovering over the screen. “I worry about Mama.”
I did too, but I didn’t know how to help her.
Misty asked, “Can you go out to the farm and check on her? I also need to get a few more clothes and things since I left in a hurry last week.”
I didn’t want to drive down that dirt road to the house full of horrible memories ever again. Every time I’d gone to pickup Misty, we made sure we did it at a time my father wouldn’t be there.
“Please,” she begged. “Mama doesn’t like using the cell phone. I can’t check in with her.”
“She is capable of driving out here to see you.”
Misty gave me that look. I understood Mama wouldn’t be driving out here. She rarely, if ever, left the property anymore—not even to attend church.
“Okay. I’ll check on her after work tomorrow or the next day, if I get time.”