“She never told me she was unhappy directly,” I informed Jay. “If she had, I would have done what I could to fix it. I had no clue she was planning to leave until I opened her bedroom door to check on her one morning and found that letter and figured out she’d had Littlejohn drive her to Tampa to see you.”
With nothing else to go on, I’d assumed she’d decided Jay’s career was established enough that she could be honest with him. That he’d take care of her.
I sighed. One of these days, I was going to stop assuming I knew what the Rollinses were thinking.
Just like one of these days, I was going to stop assuming that the Rollinses were capable of caring about me the way I cared about them.
I sat back in my seat and focused my gaze on the tree fronds swaying in the breeze beyond his head so I didn’t have to look at him. If I kept trucking down Pity Party Lane, I was pretty sure I’d end up sobbing into my fritters, whining out loud about how both Rollinses had left me without a backward glance and wondering what about me made me so damnleave-ableby the people I loved.
And afterthat, I’d pray for spontaneous combustion, because the last scraps of my ego couldn’t handle being that vulnerable in front of Jay Rollins. Even contemplating it made me want to vomit.
I cursed the day my dad had gotten the brilliant idea to invite Jay to the fucking Extravaganza, I really did. He had no freakin’ idea how much torture he’d signed me up for.
“Her bedroom door.”
My gaze met his impatiently. “Huh?”
“You said you openedherdoor.” Jay lifted an eyebrow like he was Sherlock Holmes and he’d just found a clue. “And you went tocheckon her in the morning? You weren’t with her in the room?”
I snorted. “Uh, no. Obviously. I mean, it’s not like we—”were sleeping together, I was about to say.
Exceptduh. Jay thought we’d been in love, so of course he’d assumed we’d slept together, even if the idea of ever touching Aimee in that way gave me the heebie-jeebies.
“Tell me this, Rafe.” Jay watched me closely, his eyes tight. “Did you ever love her at all?”
I opened my mouth and shut it again with a shake of my head. “I’m not getting into this with you.”
“Because when we were in Tampa… Fuck. She was pale as a ghost. She looked like she hadn’t slept in years. And I just… I don’t get how you could be that cruel. That’s not the Rafe that I knew.”
Seriously? He’d explained away the symptoms of Aimee’s illness as… asheartbreak? From the end of our nonexistent love affair? No wonder he’d been so confrontational back in Tampa, charging in to overprotect, as he always did.
The clusterfuckery was so thick I could hardly breathe.
Goddamn it, Aimee.
But she wasn’t the only one to blame for all the secrecy; I’d been right there, too, agreeing with her. And Jay wasn’t the only one who’d tried to ride in like a fucking white knight and save the day either. That was on me, too.
And sadly, it looked like I hadn’t learned my lesson, because here I was, about to mount up again.
“I loved Aimee a lot. It just… didn’t work out, I guess. But I’m very concerned about her health. So, now it’s your turn. Tell me again what you know, and then you can fly back off and rejoin your regularly scheduled rock star life, already in progress.”
Jay ignored this jibe. “She’s at St. Vincent’s in Larindosa, Wyoming.”
“Great. I’ll make some calls. And I’ll let you know that she’s okay, I promise.”
I mean,it was the nice thing to do. After all,Iwasn’t the asshole at this table.
“You can’t call,” he mumbled, tracing the edge of the plastic food tray with his finger.
“Uh. Pretty sure I can. That’s what being an emergency contact means.”
“Yes, well.” Jay cleared his throat, and his eyes flitted around, from the table, to the roof of the restaurant, to the road, to the seagulls. “Look, they wouldn’t give me information this morning in person, and all I could find out on the website was that they were a holistic treatment center that offers everything from yoga retreats to surgery, which was not helpful! So it’s… somewhat possible that I called the hospital this afternoon to get more information while pretending to be Rafael Goodman.”
“Somewhatpossible?”
He winced. “By which I mean definite. And when I called, theidiotsover there wanted me to verify my identity by giving them my birthday, which is to sayyourbirthday, and when I did, they told me I was wrong. Repeatedly.”
“What a surprise.”
