Chapter 13
CHAPTER 13
WYATT
It took two weeks for my past to fully muscle its way into my present. The irony that it arrived on April Fool’s Day was not lost on me. No one has ever made me feel more foolish than Romy Maxwell and Griffin Stone.
It’s been a week since the text from Romy arrived—the first since I left Nashville, when she sent me a string of apologies and explanations and desperate pleas.
I told her never to speak to me again, and at least she gave me that.
Until now.
Romy
Hey Wy. I’m going to be in Indianapolis in June, and I’d love to get together. I’m happy to come to you. Let me know what you think.
I miss you
The text is heavy with all the things she left unsaid. That she’ll be in Indianapolis for a show. Her first big tour. Opening for my ex-boyfriend. The one who wrote a hit single about me breaking his heart. The one she kissed on the couch that she and I had carried two and a half miles home from Goodwill because the battery on my truck had died and they wouldn’t hold it for us.
In another life, the three of us would be thick as thieves, celebrating their success. In a life where they didn’t cheat, where my mom didn’t go to prison. Where I didn’t leave Nashville behind, the city full of every broken, battered hope and happy memory.
Nashville was my first and last chance to live my own life the way I wanted, without the bad influence of my mother and all her mistakes.
Turns out I didn’t learn shit from her mistakes.
And yet every time I pick up my phone to tell Romy no, that I don’t want to see her, not now and maybe not ever, something stops me. But I need to solve it soon, because that text is like an open wound that’s starting to fester.
Until then, I’m treating it with a smorgasbord of my favorite snacks.
I’m just leaving the candy aisle, my basket half full of high-fructose corn syrup and good old-fashioned sugar, my internal compass pointing toward the chip aisle, when I see him.
He must have come straight from the office, because he’s in those khaki pants that are sexier than khaki has a right to be, fitted around his ass and his muscular thighs. He’s wearing a blue button-up shirt, the sleeves rolled to show off his corded forearms.
But I don’t ogle his forearms for long, because right away I can see that something is off with him. He’s facing a cooler, glaring at rows of packaged chicken breasts. His shoulders are pulled in and up, one fist clenched at his side. He’s got his feet planted on the scuffed white linoleum like he’s prepared to take a tackle from an NFL linebacker.
But it’s the expression on his face that stops me in my tracks beside an endcap of Capri Suns.
He’s glowering .
The golden boy’s easy smile is nowhere to be seen, his brows drawn in, his lips drawn down. I don’t know what’s going on, but whatever it is, it’s not good.
I approach slowly, but he doesn’t seem to notice anything besides the illuminated shelves of meat.
“You’re staring at the chicken like it wronged your family,” I say when I’m beside him.
His head whips around, and when he realizes it’s me, there’s just the tiniest bit of softening in his face.
“You okay?” I ask, and he tenses again.
“Rough day,” he says, his voice gravelly.
I glance down into his basket, which contains a package of basmati rice, a head of broccoli, and a bottle of soy sauce. I glance from that to the chicken and back.
“You had a rough day, and you’re not soothing it with cake and wine? Or ice cream and beer? Or sixteen different flavors of ruffled potato chips?”
The corner of his lips twitches, and then he studies my basket.
“Are you throwing a birthday party for a nine-year-old?”
“This is dinner,” I reply. “I too had a crappy day.”
His brow furrows. “There’s no protein in there. You’re going to feel like shit tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow is not the point. We care only for tonight, Owen, and tonight we dine on the finest snacks Food Town has to offer.”
He reaches in and plucks out a cellophane bag of Circus Peanuts. “You’re seriously going to eat these?”
“Orange marshmallows shaped like peanuts that taste like bananas? You bet your high and tight ass I’m going to eat these,” I tell him, then watch the blush climb into his cheeks. Damn, I love a man who blushes. “The question is, why aren’t you?”
“Because unlike you, I actually am thinking about tomorrow and the inevitable headache and stomachache and self-loathing.”
“See, just one more reason we wouldn’t work. I’m impulsive and you’re a planner.”
“Except when I’m not,” he says, and the look in his eye says he’s thinking about pressing me against his truck. That smoldering look is enough to ignite a fire inside me, and it’s only the blinding overhead light of the grocery store that keeps me from dropping my basket and leaping into his arms right here in the meat section.
We’ve been flirty texting for weeks, and I’m practically Pavlov’s dog, salivating every time I hear the ping of my phone. But our schedules are completely opposite and equally full, so we haven’t talked in real life.
Standing here in front of him, listening to the voice I’ve been imagining as I read all those teasing texts, each one walking the line of appropriateness, is like lighting a fire beneath our attraction.
At some point during this conversation, we must have stepped closer together. Suddenly I’m craning my neck to stare up at him, my chin even with his pecs. I watch his chest rise and fall, long to press my face into it, to feel the warmth of him, to listen to the sound of his heartbeat. To figure out if it’s as fast as mine is right now.
I reach up, take the candy from his hand, and drop it back into my basket. “Such a good boy,” I practically purr. I let my eyes rake over him. “Milk really does do a body good.”
His left eyebrow rises. “Wyatt, if you want me to show you what does a body good, you just have to ask.”
I arch a brow in return, heat flooding my body. “Damn, Doc.”
And then it’s his turn to drag his eyes over my body, and fuck, do I feel every inch of their path. He pauses at my hips, sweeping across to the flash of belly button just above the waistband of my jeans. His tongue darts out, moving over his bottom lip, and I wonder if he’s imagining sucking the gold ring there into his mouth, tugging on it with his teeth.
Because that’s what I’m thinking about.
And he doesn’t even know about my other piercings yet.
His eyes narrow when he reaches the deep V of my shirt, the red lace of my bra peeking out, the scrollwork of my tattoos rising even higher.
For the last three months, ever since that night back in January at Sorry Charlie’s, I’ve wanted him. I’ve always been willing to admit that to myself, like letting the thought in would keep things from going any further. But dammit, I don’t just want him in the abstract. I want to do something about it. Something that will help me forget my crappy day and my pain-in-the-ass mom and the unanswered text from my past. Suddenly all those roadblocks and warnings, all the danger signs, are fading from view.
Owen seems like a very good bad idea.
And knowing that I’ve helped unwind him right here under the fluorescent lights of the grocery store feels so good.
It makes me want to unwind him completely.
Or maybe to wind him up again.
But then his phone buzzes, and the spell breaks.
Owen steps back, pulls out the phone, and studies the screen with a furrowed brow.
“Everything okay?” I ask.
He sighs. “Yeah, I’m on call tonight. And it looks like I’m heading back to the office to stitch up a forehead.”
And I’m… disappointed . This interruption wasn’t welcome. It wasn’t serendipity. It didn’t save me from making a bad mistake.
Because now I know for sure that letting myself go with Owen McBride would be the best kind of mistake.
He slides the phone back into his pocket and reaches for a package of chicken. After all that staring and glaring and studying, he plucks one off the top without even looking and tosses it into his basket.
His eyes? Those are still on me.
“We’re not done,” he says. His voice is a delicious warning. “So go home, eat your trash food, enjoy a hot bath, and think of me. Because eventually, we won’t be interrupted.”
All I can do is nod, my voice snatched from my throat as I watch him turn and stalk toward the front of the store, his shoulders no longer tense, a smirk playing at the corners of his mouth.