Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
Summer
Of course I couldn’t stay.
I had just exited one relationship and the way I was gravitating toward Hatch, I was about to make a huge mistake and jump into another. With my ex-fiancé’s teammate, no less. Simply impossible.
You already destroyed one player, Summer. Why not go for the team?
Shelby Mae might be the sarcastic voice in my head, but I agreed with her on this one. This was absolute madness.
On the train back into the city, I indulged in a memory from this morning: Hatch stretched out on the bed, the cover slipped enough to reveal the curve of his gorgeous glutes.
His dark, tousled head lay on the pillow and lovely, sooty eyelashes dipped like a delicate fringe on his cheekbone.
I captured a mental snapshot for the lonely nights ahead, then continued my cowardly slide out the door.
Retaking the reins of my life required that I leave all that behind.
My first stop was my apartment building in Riverbrook where I usually received a lovely smile from Victor.
But not today. Showing up with a wedding dress stuffed into a backpack was definitely a vibe.
I hated treating it with such disdain, but I couldn’t leave it behind.
“Hi, Victor. How are you?”
“Good, Miss Landry.” I could tell he was thinking that it should have been Mrs. Carter. “Mr. Carter isn’t back yet from his”—he cleared his throat—“vacation.”
“Oh, that’s fine. I just need to pop in for a spell.” He winced. “And I’m guessing you have strict orders not to give me access.”
“The locks have been changed, and Mr. Carter didn’t leave a spare key for you, I’m afraid.”
Just as I thought. “The thing is, Victor, I need to get my belongings. Would that be possible?”
“Sure, Miss Landry, I can do that.”
Wow, that was a lot easier than I expected. Maybe I still retained some of my Southern charm after all. I followed him to the elevator bank and gave him a genuine smile as we entered the car. But instead of using his master key to access the penthouse floor, he pressed B.
For Basement.
“What’s going on?” The elevator landed with a thud instead of the usual smooth arrival that heralded the upper echelons of the building. The doors opened to a dark, dank—okay, it wasn’t that bad. It was quite well-lit and smelled merely a little musty.
“Mr. Carter packed up your belongings and put them out for trash pick-up. I managed to save most of it.”
He did what? I followed Victor to a corner of the basement near what looked like an incinerator. Beside it, several cardboard boxes were piled high as if ready to be thrown in.
Cautiously, I approached one and unpeeled the flaps. Clothes. Another one contained skincare products and toiletries. It didn’t look like everything, but it was hard to know how many boxes comprised a life.
I opened a couple more, frantically searching for—oh, thank God. My laptop was here. I could replace most everything but that would wipe me out.
“You said most of it.” I turned to Victor. “Did some of it get thrown out?”
“It was by the dumpster, but I had a feeling you’d come back for it. A couple of boxes were already mashed by the truck by the time I realized.”
I threw my arms around him and gave him a hug. “Thank you! I know I’m no longer a tenant, so I appreciate you going out of your way to help me. I’ll take it away today.”
“Your car’s no longer here, Miss Landry.”
Not my car, of course. A lease that Dash gifted me last Christmas because he was tired of looking at my “clunker,” a perfectly respectable ten-year-old Honda Civic. So, no transport.
“Anything else I need to know?”
“Something came for you from the bank, maybe a credit card.”
“My ATM card! Do you have it?”
He smiled. “In the back office. I talked to the mail carrier before she delivered to the mailbox. Just in case there was anything for you.”
What a life saver.
“Mr. Carter did ask that I call him if you show up. I don’t have to.”
I kissed him on the cheek. “I don’t want you getting into trouble, Victor. Tell him I came by and looked miserable. Would it be okay if I took your number so I can call you about picking up this stuff?”
He smiled, relieved I was being so easygoing about it all. “Of course.”
Aiming for discretion in the coffee shop, I pulled my Motors cap down because this was Rebels country and even the baristas knew who I was. When the sales associate asked for my name, I said “Shelby.”
She barely looked at me, but she did give my hat significant side-eye.
I took a seat in the back with my eye on the door.
Three minutes later, Adeline arrived and beelined right for me.
I let her take me in her arms, just like I’d done with her brother several times over the last week.
I also thanked my stars that I’d grabbed a change of clothes from one of the boxes.
Wearing Adeline’s or Aurora’s duds would not have been a clever move.
“Are you okay?” Adeline asked. “I’ve been so worried about you!”
“I’m fine. Trying to stay under the radar.”
She nodded. “But you’re good?”
“I am. I mean, there’s a lot that’s not great, but I feel okay.”
She held me back. “You look better. Less drawn.”
Praise cheese and Hatch-made orgasms. “I’ve finally allowed myself to eat a full meal.”
“Well, hello, stranger.” Rosie had snuck up on us and was standing behind Adeline with a cheeky grin.
Adeline nudged her. “She’s going incognito.”
“In a Motors cap around here? Could work, I suppose.”
Adeline rolled her eyes. “I’ll get the coffees in. Summer, you’re good?”
“I am.”
As she walked away, Rosie and I sat. She took both my hands and squeezed. “You look good. Ten days on the lam has put some color back in your cheeks.”
Plenty of reasons for that, but I wouldn’t be going into details.
It shouldn’t have been a big deal. I had been lying—mostly by omission—for years. But this was different. This involved people we knew—Dash, Hatch, the Kershaws.
It might seem strange to have asked Rosie and Adeline to be my bridesmaids when I didn’t know them all that well.
Since I started dating Dash, he had isolated me so that I didn’t have many deep friendships.
Coupled with my reluctance to share about my past, this resulted in surface acquaintances that I wasn’t sure I could trust. I had followed these girls’ world travel adventures online, madly jealous of their free-spiritedness and tight friendship.
To have Rosie and Adeline in my corner now was amazing.
“Where were you?” Rosie demanded. “Okay, hold on until Addy comes back and you don’t have to repeat yourself.”
We chatted a little about Rosie’s job in a tattoo parlor and about some of the hot guys who were regulars. Her ink was amazing, and she wore it with such confidence. I’d always admired her punk aesthetic and bad girl vibe. All I had was my tiny butterfly tattoo. Some rebellion.
Adeline returned with coffees and a selection of pastries “for the table.”
“For my mouth, more like,” Rosie said. “Okay, Summer, go.”
“Where do I start?”
“How about the church bathroom window? How did you even jump without breaking your ankle?”
On the train, I’d had time to think about my story, so I tried to keep it as truthful as possible.
An Uber instead of a grumpy hockey player.
A motel in the sticks instead of a lake house in Michigan.
Time alone to reflect on my sins instead of lazy days on the patio, sunny spins around the lake, and orgasms on the hood of a car.
“What about Carter?” Adeline asked. “Have you had a chance to talk to him?”
“Briefly. He’s obviously not ready and I want to give him space. He did, however, change the locks, return my car to the dealership, and throw out all my belongings.”
Adeline’s eyes went wide. “What a dick.”
There was also the woman he took to our bed on our wedding day, but I could hardly talk, could I?
“He’s angry, and he has a right to be. I handled it poorly and I let my life become enmeshed in his in such a way that untangling comes with consequences.
But I still have a separate bank account, so there’s that.
” Not that I had more than a few hundred dollars in it after I set aside money for rent on wherever I would be living. So much for disaster preparedness.
Rosie squeezed my hand again. “What do you need from us?”
Tears sprang into my eyes. “Just being here and listening is amazing.”
“Have a pastry.” Adeline pushed a cranberry-orange scone my way. “We’re also bringing these to the party.”
I broke off a corner and popped it in my mouth, loving the buttery flakiness and sharp pop of fruit. “My next step is finding a place to live. I’ve already started looking at Craig’s List for roommates—”
“Oh, you’re staying with us.” Rosie shared a quick check-in glance with Adeline, who nodded enthusiastically.
They had moved in together about six months ago.
I would have expected Adeline to live with her boyfriend Lars and his little girl Mabel, who she had nannied for last year before they fell hard for each other.
But they were taking it slow like the mature, grounded individuals they were. I could learn so much.
“But you guys don’t have room for me.” Please say you have room for me.
“We have an office with a pull-out sofa,” Rosie said. “It’s very small, but there’s a closet in there and we can probably squeeze a dresser in, if you need it. Unless you’d rather room with complete strangers like a weirdo.”
“Which we get,” Adeline said. “Rosie is kind of a grouch before her morning coffee, so I’d understand your reluctance. Oh my God, are you crying?”
I stroked away the tears. “I was so ashamed of how I behaved. That’s why I-I didn’t talk to you much. And now you’re being so forgiving and wonderful.”
Rosie shook my shoulder. “Nothing to forgive! You prioritized your mental health when you could have bowed to peer pressure and gone with the flow. Don’t you worry, we have your back.”