The second I hang up, the silence in the truck is thick enough to choke on.
Hailey’s the first to speak. “You didn’t have to lie.”
I let out a dry laugh, running a hand down my face. “I didn’t? Should I have told her you’re in my lap with my hand around your throat?”
She snorts, but it’s uneasy. “Well, that sounds like you’re murdering me, so maybe not.”
I don’t laugh this time. The tension’s snapped, the air gone sharp. I gently lift her off me and settle back behind the wheel. “I should get you home.”
She crosses her arms, staring out the fogged window. “Sure.”
The rest of the drive is silent. No music. No jokes. Just the unbearable tension that hangs thickly between us.
When I pull up in front of her building, she unbuckles, murmurs, “Thanks,” and slips out before I can even attempt to get out and walk her up. It’s probably for the best anyway.
I watch her walk inside, that damn ache spreading in my chest. By the time the door closes behind her, I’m gripping the steering wheel hard enough my knuckles ache.
“Fuck!” I punch the steering wheel, pissed at myself. At the timing. At the universe for handing me something that feels this good, just to remind me it can’t actually be mine.
CHAPTER 14
Hailey
Idon’t hear from him. Not that night. Not the next morning. Not the one after that.
By day three, I’ve accepted that our hot little fling ran its course and I’ll never have sex that good again in my life. And the worst part? I can’t even be mad.
I’m the idiot who climbed right into his truck like a giddy little elf, kissed him until we fogged up his windows, and then watched him lie to my best friend on my behalf.
I didn’t expect him to tell her about us. There is nous.But I guess I never considered the position I was putting myself in to feel cheap when the truth finally hit us in the face the way it did.
But I’m not Cole’s girlfriend. I’m not even his hookup. I am, and this is the part that really chokes me, the person who is kind of completely off-limits.
So no, I don’t get to be mad. I get to be… whatever this is. Lonely. Defensive. Restless.
I toss my phone on the couch, and it bounces off a throw pillow and lands screen up, taunting me with a blank notification bar. My living room finally looks like the Christmas wonderland of my dreams. I’ve spent the last three days arranging my village and making sure my ice-skating figurinesstay upright. I even used cotton for fake snow. I stare at it, admiring all the little details I included… and yet I have no one to share it with.
Outside the window, Denver looks like it’s ready for Christmas. Inside, it’s just me and the corny Hallmark movie I’m not watching and the gallery wall he hung for me.
Stupidly level gallery wall.
Everywhere I look, there he is. The coffee table he helped me build. The TV console he anchored. The shelf that almost murdered me before he saved me in one arm and made my brain stop functioning for a solid three minutes.
I groan at my lack of self-control, instead of letting that moment be what it was—a strange man helping me from falling over. I took it as some romantic gesture that now has my brain wrapped around Cole Bristol so tight he’s all I can think about.
I flop down on the couch, tug my blanket over my legs, and stare at my phone again like I can conjure a text through sheer need.
I don’t even have the satisfaction of him watching my Instagram stories, because he doesn’t use social media. He barely texts with punctuation. He’s not out here posting thirst traps with captions like “just another day on the job,” so I can’t even lurk and pretend I’m not missing him.
I press the heel of my hand to my forehead. “God, Hailey. Get it together.”
It isn’t just him. It’s everything. It’s being in a new city where I don’t have a built-in Friday night plan. It’s walking past couples in beanies and matching scarves and thinking I could be like that, if I hadn’t fallen for the one man absolutely off-limits.
It’s the fact that Christmas is in, what, two weeks? And I still haven’t bought a plane ticket home because the airlines have decided my presence in Illinois is worth approximately the GDP of a small nation.
I grab my laptop from the coffee table, our furniture baby, and flip it open, pulling up the airline websites I’ve had bookmarked since October.
Chicago. December 22–26. One adult. I hit the search button again. The spinning wheel of financial doom twirls and the number pops up. I quickly sort them from cheapest to most expensive and practically vomit when the numbers populate.
