Chapter 5 #2
“That’s all I can ask,” I tell her. “Thank you.”
“No problem. I, uh, I should probably get going. It was nice to meet you guys. Sorry again about running into you.” Lola doesn’t wait for a response, just gives a frantic little wave and scurries toward the registers and away from us.
“You okay?” Griffin asks softly.
Am I?
“Don’t know.”
“She’s still in town.” He rubs the scruff of his jaw.
“Yeah.”
“Do you think she’ll call you?”
I think if she was going to call me, she would have done it ten years ago, so I shrug.
“Yeah. Not sure you should leave it to chance, man.”
Narrowing my eyes, I focus on my friend as his lips curve into a smile that is a little too devious for comfort. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, we can come back for this stuff later. Right now, we have a best friend to stalk.” Griffin pulls his keys from his pocket, and I struggle to keep a hysterical laugh from tearing out of my throat.
“Let’s go. I’ll pull the car around while you watch the exit.
We need to figure out which car is hers if we’re going to follow her home. ”
I pinch the bridge of my nose as I inhale slowly. “What?”
“Trust me.” Abandoning our cart, Griffin grabs my hand and drags me out of the grocery store. Lola waits in line for the cash register and doesn’t see us leave.
“Okay, you hide here.” Griffin shoves me around the corner of the building. “You watch the door. I’ll be right back with the car.”
I must be out of my damn mind, because I don’t tell him he’s being ridiculous. I don’t fight him on it. I simply nod and position myself out of sight of the door, but my eyes never leave it.
Griffin pulls up in his G-Wagon before Lola leaves the store, and we watch as she tosses her bags into the back of a light-blue SUV before hopping into the driver’s seat and carefully pulling out.
“This requires the right soundtrack,” Griffin mutters. He pulls up the Mission Impossible theme as we let another car pull out between us and Lola, then he trails her. Like some kind of spy or stalker.
I’m stalking Indie’s best friend. Totally normal behavior. Not unhinged at all. This isn’t wildly inappropriate and boundary-crossing. “We shouldn’t be doing this.”
“Okay. You don’t have to do anything. But I’m going to follow her.”
Griffin follows Lola’s blue SUV block after block, always careful to keep at least one car between us, but not so much distance that we’ll get stuck at a light and lose her.
He hums along with the music the entire time, and I’m deeply aware of how completely ridiculous this whole situation is, but I can’t bring myself to put up more of a fight about it.
Although following Lola may have been Griffin’s idea, the thought had crossed my mind too.
But I wouldn’t have acted on it if I were alone.
Soon, we’re making our way through a cute little section of the Loring Park neighborhood, and Griffin hangs back a bit more because there are no longer any cars between Lola and us. And when she pulls up in front of a well-kept bungalow and stops the car, Griffin quickly pulls over and parks.
We watch silently as Lola loads too many bags in her arms and penguin-walks up to the front door.
She kicks it a few times, and I suck in a breath when it opens and Indie steps out onto the front porch.
Her pink hair is pulled back in two French braids, and her face is free from makeup.
She looks beautiful. Then she laughs, and I swear my fucking heart stops.
“That her?” Griffin whispers, as though he’s afraid they’ll hear us from down the block.
I gulp. “That’s her.”
“She’s cute, man.”
She’s more than cute. Indigo Bloom is the most beautiful woman in the world. She’s the light of my life, and I’ve been languishing in darkness for a decade. Watching her throw her head back and laugh the way she used to makes me realize how much light I’ve been missing without her.
“She’s everything.”
We watch the two women unload the SUV, and all too soon, they disappear inside the bungalow and don’t come back out again. After twenty minutes of silence, Griffin pulls out his phone, types out a text, and sends it. My phone buzzes, and when I look, I see Indie’s house address.
“Now you know where she’s staying. We can set up a surveillance rotation. Get all the guys to watch her and help you figure out if she keeps to a set schedule. If we know when she leaves the house, where she goes, how often she goes there, then we can help you hatch a plan for your meet-cute.”
Arching one eyebrow, I turn to the man who is one of my best friends, but who has clearly read too many romance novels. “My meet-cute?”
“Hell yeah, dude. You need a good story to tell your kids someday.”
I can’t stop my laughter. “We’re not asking the guys to do surveillance.”
“You’d rather hire someone? I bet we could find a private investigator.”
“Griffin. No.”
My teammate stares at me. “You can’t let her slip through your fingers. If you’ve really been in love with her for the last decade, you have to do whatever it takes to get her back.”
“I know. I’ll figure something out.”
Something that doesn’t involve stalking.