Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
HAZEL
I wasn’t remotely in the mood for a girls’ night. I wasn’t in the mood for anything except being deep under my covers, hiding from the world. But if there was a woman alive who could dodge the unholy trinity of Penny, Kiera, and Emma, it sure as hell wasn’t me.
So here I was, squeezed around a high-top table at the Cork and Barrel.
Emma and Kiera were a bottle deep into wine, while Penny and I were on our second mocktails—her because she was pregnant, me because I’d given up alcohol that long-ago day when I’d left Star Falls.
That it had been painfully difficult to do only helped my resolve to never go back to it.
I hadn’t eaten lunch, so the sugar buzz should’ve been numbing everything. Instead, I just felt more…exposed.
Kiera pointed at Penny and Emma. “You two have a glow. I hate you both. This is my longest streak of no glow since I met Auggie in high school.” She glanced my way, and her eyes widened. “Hold the phone. I just found a third glow.”
Penny’s and Emma’s heads swiveled my way in unison.
“No glow,” I said. “I got some sun today at work.”
The three women looked at one another with amusement.
“I did!” I said. “I bet my no-glow streak was longer than all of yours put together.”
“A glow comes from the inside,” Kiera said.
“Hey.” I covered my hot cheeks with my hands. “It could totally be a sunburn.”
Everyone cracked up—except Penny. She just tilted her head like she’d had a birdie whisper something in her ear. “Was,” she murmured.
“What?”
“You said your streak was longer than all of ours added up together. As in past tense.”
I stared into my drink, making sure it wasn’t alcohol. I couldn’t find any other excuse for why I was so stupid. And grumpy. And still furious.
And sad…
It’d been two days since the “just friends” incident, and I’d become a master at slipping in and out of Tucker’s place at the right times to avoid him.
I had missed calls. I had not read texts.
And I knew this was just another form of running from a problem, sticking my head in the sand, but I was nothing but a cracked heart taped together with sarcasm and french fries.
With not a single intention of acknowledging any of it.
How could I have been so reckless with myself? He’d been beyond fun and sexy, and wildly uninhibited, which in turn had allowed me to be the same.
But he’d never promised a thing. Which meant I’d done this to myself. Me. Myself. And I.
“Something you want to share with the class?” Kiera asked me.
“Nope.” I mimed zipping my lips and throwing away the key.
Penny raised her brows. “So Ryder didn’t catch you and Tucker in a full-on lip-lock up against a wall?”
I groaned and sank in my seat. “I can’t believe he told you.”
“If it helps,” she said with a grin, “I had to make all sorts of promises I have no intentions of keeping in order to get him to spill.”
“Spill what?” Emma demanded.
Penny looked at me.
I sighed in defeat. “Tucker and I—”
“Did the deed?” Emma gasped, clutching her heart. “Finally!”
I opened my mouth to lie but couldn’t do it. I sighed and dropped my head to the table and thunked it a few times. Without lifting it, I muttered, “It was a shit show.”
Emma choked on her drink. We all reached over to thump her on the back while she cough-laughed herself to tears.
“Damn, I’d have thought looking how he looks, he’d be good at it,” she wheezed, swiping under her eyes.
“Well, he’s not,” I said, lying with the enthusiasm of a woman seeking vengeance.
They all howled.
I crossed my arms and glared. There was no way in hell I’d admit Tucker had taken me apart and put me back together again in spectacular fashion and then dumped a bucket of just friends over my head.
“Listen, mistakes were made, okay? We can’t go back.
And anyway, I don’t see what’s so interesting about all this.
” I looked around for our server. “I need fries. Right now.”
“You don’t see what’s ‘so interesting about all this’?
Really?” Emma leaned in, wide-eyed. “You’re living the dream!
Every woman in Star Falls has wanted a Colburn brother at some point, even if they’re not single.
Or born in the right decade. I mean, people still talk about what those three got up to when they were younger, more than they talk about the Legend of Star Falls!
And you snagged the last single male Colburn. ”
Jealousy flared, sharp as glass.
Because I hadn’t snagged him at all.
“I’m hoping some women in this town have more sense than to lust after a Colburn.”
“I mean, I don’t,” Emma quipped. “But I get your point.”
“Ditto,” Penny said. “Though I wouldn’t mind a whole bunch fewer women wanting my man.”
“But you’re in love. That’s different. Tucker isn’t in love.”
At the beat of surprised silence, I realized I’d given my own feelings away. So much for stealth. Dammit.
Kiera’s expression softened. “Look, the Colburn men? They can be assholes. Tucker included.” She reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “Want me to make him pay? No one can make a man suffer like his sister.”
“Thanks, but no. And I really don’t want to talk about it anymore, if that’s okay.
” The sadness was fading, replaced by something far more productive: anger.
I was furious with myself. And deeply bruised.
Once again, I’d put my heart on the line and had gotten burned.
But I was done bleeding. “All that matters is that there’s nothing going on between me and him. Not like that.”
I knew I was just fooling myself by pretending that with a few days’ distance and a bunch of overthinking, I’d be completely over him.
But pride? Pride was a hell of a lot easier to carry than hope.
Kiera gave me another squeeze. “You sure? He can be hard to read. I speak fluent Colburn. I could translate.”
“Strawberry shortcake,” I said, then slurped the last of my drink while groans sounded all around. Because strawberry shortcake was our safe word. Words. It meant no more questions.
“I’m going to the restroom,” I said, getting up. “It’ll give you a minute to gossip about me.”
I weaved through the crowd and into the dim hallway. I was heading toward the glowing Ladies sign when a hand clamped down on my shoulder.
I turned with a half smile, assuming it was one of the girls.
It wasn’t.
The guy was built like a battering ram with something to prove, his face twisted with recognition, and not the good kind.
“I know you,” he said.
Unfortunately, I knew him too. Ricky Herman. Fired months ago from Colburn Restorations after trying to take a swing at Caleb and sabotaging the Henderson job. Subtle as a sledgehammer, then and now.
And by his expression, that hadn’t changed.
“Ricky.” I kept my tone even, fingers curled around my phone like muscle memory, prepared to call for help.
“You got me fired.”
“Actually…” I swiped on my phone to bring up the Phone app. “You did that all on your own.”
“I went to jail. I had to pay fines out the ass. I got dumped by my wife and my insurance company and sued for fraud. You ruined me.”
“Again, not me.” I craned my neck to check down the hallway—empty, of course. I managed a polite smile, gesturing that I wanted to get past him. “If you’ll excuse me—”
He sidestepped, blocking my way, close enough that I could smell the alcohol and resentment on his breath. “I want my job back.”
I gave a mirthless laugh. “You know that’s not up to me.”
He stepped in even closer, his eyes lit with something sharp and ugly. “I don’t know which Colburn you slept with to land that gig, but it’s bullshit. You all fucked with my livelihood. Now I’m going to fuck with yours.”
“Is that a threat?”
“A fact.”
His eyes were clearer now that he’d let out some tension. I was going to chalk this up to too much alcohol plus an excess of bluster. “Back up, Ricky.”
“You back up.” He shoulder checked me hard enough that I stumbled into the wall. By the time I caught my balance, he was gone.
I exhaled slowly, the tension still buzzing under my skin as I walked back to the bar.
Emma was saying, “Someone talk me off a ledge so I don’t murder a coworker. And by ‘coworker,’ I mean Caleb.”
“Murder’s a lot of paperwork,” Kiera said.
She nodded. “That’ll do it.” She tilted her head at Kiera. “You seem off, babe. What’s going on with you?”
Kiera drew a deep breath as I slid back onto my seat. “Yesterday would’ve been my sixth wedding anniversary,” she said softly.
All our hearts stopped for her. She’d lost Auggie three years ago, and I couldn’t imagine the grief.
“Oh, honey.” Emma reached out for Kiera’s hand.
Kiera shook her head. “I actually almost forgot, which is what got to me. Abi found me crying in the pantry with a bag of chips. She wrapped her little arms around me and whispered, ‘Is it because of your hair?’ So then I was crying for two reasons.”
Penny sniffled loudly, and I handed her a napkin. “Pregnancy hormones?”
“Yes!” Penny wailed.
I slid an arm around her and looked at Kiera. “For what it’s worth, I love your hair.”
Kiera gave a soggy smile. “I ten-out-of-ten recommend having a daughter so you can argue with an even sassier and more stubborn version of yourself, all before eight a.m.”
We stayed for another hour, laughing more than I’d thought I could. Which felt like a miracle, given the emotional minefield we’d all been dancing through and my run-in with Ricky.
Finally, Kiera had to get home to relieve her babysitter, and Penny and Emma Ubered together.
Penny rolled down the window and yelled at me: “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”
Since she and Ryder still dragged each other into dark rooms and corners to make out, I didn’t take this too seriously.
“Hazel?”
I turned. Kiera was behind me, mist curling around us.
“I love you like a sister,” she said.
“Are we about to drunken hug?” I asked. “Because I’m a little hot and sweaty right now.”
Kiera stepped into me and hugged me hard.
“Okay.” I sighed and hugged her back.
She squeezed me again, then added a little shake. “You have every right to feel however you want. I’ll back you up. Always.”
“Thank you, though I sense a but coming my way.”
“But…I have to say this. Tucker is a solid guy. The best of the best of the solid guys.”
I sighed again. “I know.”
She nodded. “But what you might not know is that while he risks everything on the job without a single thought for his own safety, in his personal life, he’s much more guarded.
Oh, he’s good at hiding behind that affable smile and quick wit, but there’s a solid brick wall around his heart. He hasn’t lowered it for anyone.”
She didn’t have to say it. I’d come up against that wall with two little words: just friends.
“Except,” Kiera said, “possibly you.”
“I don’t intend to hurt him, if that’s what you’re getting to.”
“Hazel, no.” She reached for my hand. “That’s not what I’m getting at. I know my brother, and the thing is, he’s great at being a good time. But I’m not sure he’s ever learned what love actually is. Until recently, he hasn’t had a lot of good examples.”
I felt a twinge of sadness. I’d been there. I knew what his life had been like growing up.
“What I’m trying to say,” Kiera went on, “is that I’m worried about him hurting you.”
Too late… But as I looked into her bossy, know-it-all, caring eyes, my throat tightened.
I’d been back for months, and yet I still wasn’t used to having people know me, care about me—the kind of care that came from decades of knowing someone.
For as much as I’d loved the experiences and adventures I’d had over the past ten years, I’d missed this.
Missed them, all of them. Even Tucker. Maybe especially Tucker. My dear “just friend” Tucker.
How terrifying was that?