Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
SHILOH
Idon’t know how it happened, but I’m pretty sure I’ve just been broken up with.
A little bit shocked by the rapid turn of events, it takes me a second to get my brain rebooted.
I can still feel the press of Roy’s mouth to mine—his hand on my face—burning against my skin.
We never kiss or even really touch in public.
Hell, we rarely spend time together in public.
I turn my head, watching as Roy slides past Ewan and strolls casually toward the door.
I think you and I were about done anyway, he’d said, which is so close to the way my own thoughts have been turning recently that it feels like he stole them right from my head.
I look around the bar, noting Ryan’s eyes on us, as well as a table of locals off to the side.
Burning with the shame of a public confrontation, I allow the anger to bubble to the surface.
Without looking at him, I push past Ewan and follow Roy.
“Shi—” Ewan’s fingers touch my sleeve. I yank my arm away.
“Don’t,” I warn him. “Just…don’t.”
Turning my back to him, I follow Roy through the front door, takeout I’m no longer hungry for still clutched in my hands.
“Roy,” I call, not wanting him to get into his car and drive off. He glances over his shoulder at me, turning so he’s facing me as he continues to walk backward.
“Not the right one?” he asks, as though the reason I’m following him is that he gave me the wrong bag.
“No, can you just…” Reaching forward, I snag his arm and pull him to a stop. He quirks an eyebrow at me, smirking and looking for all the world as though he’s having a grand time this evening. Not for the first time, I wonder what the fuck is wrong with him.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“Well, seems to me like the love of your life is back in town, so it’s time for the spare to go on his way. Right?”
“Fuck.” The word comes out on an exhalation. As if what he said wasn’t bad enough, the look on his face is so disinterested, one would think we were talking about the weather. It makes me want to shake him, see what other emotions I might be able to jar loose. “Why would you say that?”
He smirks. “Loh, come on. Just because I wasn’t born here doesn’t mean I didn’t do the onboarding once I arrived. I was barely here a day before someone whispered in my ear about Shiloh Lepage and Ewan Fate. Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“We are—were friends, Roy. He has nothing to do with us.”
“You know”—he cuts across me, tone losing that playful edge and sharpening into something mean—“there’s a fine line between being clueless and being stupid.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means every single person in this town knows what’s going on but you.
It means I know about all those emails you send him.
It means I knew I didn’t have to try, that I’d never match up to that man’s ghost, and there was never a possibility of you loving anyone else while he was around.
Hell, even while he wasn’t around, because when you do a thing, you do it right, don’t you? ”
The words are like a knife wrapped up in silk—a barb disguised as a compliment.
The look on his face is so pitying, it makes me feel physically sick.
This version of Roy is one I don’t know, one I’d suspected was living below the surface but hadn’t had the chance to meet yet. I wish I wasn’t meeting it now.
“Let’s go back to your place and talk,” I suggest, voice coming out strangled.
I don’t know how this evening got out of control so fast. The only thing I can think of to bring it back on track is to continue on with the plan we’d made earlier.
What I don’t want to do is continue making a public spectacle of myself.
“No,” he replies succinctly, without so much as a pause. “I think we’ve taken this as far as it was meant to go. Why settle for the placeholder when the real thing is right there?”
He’s not yelling. In fact, his voice is eerily calm, almost flippant, like we’re two friends having a laugh. It somehow makes the words hurt worse, hearing them delivered in that careless tone. It makes it hard to pay attention to the meaning behind them as he fires them like bullets into my chest.
“Stop it,” I tell him when he opens his mouth to continue. I’m not yelling either, but my voice is hard in a way that even I’m not used to. I don’t like being this person—the person who gets into public arguments and fights with others. I repeat, “Stop it.”
He smirks at me, the expression cutting instead of its usual teasing.
I don’t know what to do with this version of Roy.
There’s always been something sharp about him, but the barbed wire hadn’t been stretched between us up until now.
I can see it in his eyes—the desire for me to rise to the occasion, yell at him, argue a little bit.
Disturbingly, the worst part of this situation isn’t even the fact that he’s breaking up with me; it’s that he’s doing it in public.
Did it in front of Ewan, of all people. Right alongside the embarrassment and annoyance, though, is the relief.
Relief that it’s over and I don’t have to pretend anymore.
Looking at his face in the dim light, lit by the artificial glow of the streetlamps, I wonder if maybe I wasn’t the only one pretending.
“I’ll see you on the water,” Roy says, turning away from me.
I don’t call him back, feeling, more than anything, grateful that at least the shit show is over.
I’ll talk to him tomorrow morning, before we go to haul.
Privacy and the cool dawn air might help leveler heads prevail.
Waiting until I see him disappear around the corner, I turn to walk to my own truck.
My hands are slightly shaky, and my chest feels weird, like I suddenly have access to twenty percent more oxygen than I did before. I hate shit like this.
My eyes immediately catch on Ewan when I turn around, standing under the awning in the shadows.
Every single emotion Roy stirred up burns away, leaving only anger behind.
Ewan looks timid and small there, standing by the entrance to the Temptress, expression sad and a little worried. He has no right. No fucking right.
“Do not,” I warn him, walking off down the street.
Why the hell did I have to park so far away?
I can feel Ewan behind me, every cell in my body attuned to him like I have echolocation for him and him alone.
I clench my teeth, suddenly feeling incredibly exhausted.
I wish he’d never come home. Whatever was between Roy and me had been fragile from the beginning, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt to see it shatter.
“Shiloh,” he says quietly. I whirl around, startling him. He takes a step back.
“I never fucking held it against you that you left,” I tell him, anger and hurt turning the words into sandpaper on my tongue.
“I didn’t even mind that you never called.
You always hated talking on the phone, and hell, I do, too.
But you know what, Ewan? I’m sick of making excuses for you, sick of keeping you one way in my head, only to find out that this is the person you really are.
You could have sent a return email one time.
Just once, even if it was to tell me you wanted to be left alone. ”
Ewan’s throat bobs as he swallows, eyes shiny with what I suspect might be tears.
He stands quietly, listening, looking for all the world like a man being sentenced to death.
Usually, the sight of that hurt look on his face would shut me right up, but I couldn’t stem the flow of words even if I tried.
“I don’t know why you came back. I really don’t.” Shaking my head, I lift my arms in the air as though to encompass the empty street. “Unless you’re here to burn the bridges you left intact last time, I guess. You’re off to a hell of a start.”
He chews on his lip, the shine gone from his eyes as he blinks it away. There’s a slight curl to his shoulders, his body deflating by degrees as I talk. Even as I go silent, he doesn’t say anything in return. I suppose there isn’t much left to say.
Turning around, I leave him on the sidewalk and stride the last handful of paces to my truck. As I leave, I glance up in the rearview, locking eyes with him as he stands unmoved, watching as I’m the one who drives away.