I squeezed my eyes closed and let out a slew of curses in my head before turning to face the man moving in my direction.
I tried to make my expression as neutral as possible. “Mitch. Hey.”
“You got a minute?”
Shit. This was the last thing I needed. I let out an exhausted sigh. “Look, I have a lot going on right now?—”
“You’ve been avoidin’ me.”
I could feel a twitch forming in my eyelid as an all-too-familiar ache started to build in my temple. “I haven’t been avoiding you. I’ve just... moved on.”
After I put myself out there with Raylan and he shot me down, I decided it was time to let him go completely. Or at least try to. I started dating in the hopes of moving on, and Mitch was the first guy I attempted to get serious with. He was sweet andgood looking. He had been the first guy to make me laugh in a long time, and he treated me well. Best of all, he really liked me.
Problem was, there was no spark. I tried to force it, really wanting to feel that kind of passion for someone other than Raylan, but it didn’t work. No matter how hard I pushed. I could tell he was starting to feel things more than I was, so I decided to end it before I could hurt him any worse. Unfortunately, he didn’t seem as accepting of the breakup as I’d hoped.
He took a step closer. “Look, I know you said you didn’t feel the same way I did, but I think if you just gave it a little more time, you could start to feel it.”
That throb in my temple got more intense. “Mitch?—”
“You hardly gave us a chance, Len. I’m just asking you to give me a shot. Arealshot.”
I started to shake my head, my heart squeezing painfully. “I’m sorry.” The last thing I wanted to do was hurt him, but I couldn’t will those feelings to happen.
As irrational as it was, I blamed Raylan for not being able to fully connect with any of the men I’d tried dating since my brother’s wedding. It wasn’t like I’d stayed at home eating pints of Ben and Jerry’s and watching those pathetic high school rom-coms where the popular jock ends up falling for the nerdy outcast while I pined after the guy who shot me down.
Okay, so I might have done a bit of that, but only for a week. After seven days of wallowing, I forced myself to get off my ass and get back to the land of the living. After a much needed shower, of course.
I’d tried my hardest to move on from the surly bastard, but no matter how much he pissed me off or hurt my feelings, I couldn’t seem to shut off that fire smoldering inside me that seemed determined to burn just for him.
The flutter of hope on Mitch’s face melted away as an anger I’d never witnessed from him before swept over his features.
“You’re making a huge mistake, Lennix,” he said through gritted teeth, his jaw clenched so tight the muscle ticked. “And one day soon, you’re going to regret it.”
With that, he spun on his boot heel and stomped off, leaving me with that persistent throb in my skull I knew wasn’t going away anytime soon.
Chapter Five
Raylan
Most days I loved what I did for a living. I got to spend my hours riding horses or ATVs, hiking trails, fishing, and all other manner of outdoor activities. My office consisted of some of the most beautiful vistas this country had to offer. It was a dream job. But even dream jobs came with shitty days. Days when you felt like your head was going to explode. And today was one of those days.
If anything could go wrong, it did. Starting with the group I took out on a sunrise hike up to Horizon Ridge. I knew I was in for it when at least half the group of Wall Street bros showed up hungover, having partied the night before like they were still in college and the lodge was a goddamn frat house throwing a kegger. I didn’t understand what had possessed them to spend the entire night drinking when they knew they had be up before dawn. They’d booked the hike themselves, for Christ’s sake. It wasn’t as if it was a surprise.
What should have been an hour long,peacefulhike for beginners took more than double the time as each of them had tostop at least once to puke in the bushes along the way. And that was before we even reached the summit. Horizon Ridge held one of the most stunning views of the valley, but they’d all been too strung out to appreciate the beauty, gasping for air like they’d barfed up their lungs on the way up.
Given how the day started, I should have predicted it was only going to get worse. As they say, when it rains, it pours.
Part of my job was dealing with all kinds of different personalities, but some of those personalities would make even the most relaxed, centered person contemplate causing bodily harm. Like the miserable asshole and his know-it-all wife on the midday trail ride. The middle-aged, balding accountant type had bitched about everything. From the smell of the horses, to the temperature, to the dust in his eyes irritating his contacts. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why someone who hated nature as much as that prick did wouldpayto be out in it.
Then there was his wife. A six minute YouTube video on horseback riding and the woman had convinced herself she was a fucking equestrian, arguing with every single instruction I gave her. Everything from how to cinch the girth to the proper stirrup placement was a fight that put us behind schedule and annoyed the rest of the guests who were all waiting to get on with their ride. She accused me of mansplaining and then of being condescending when I offered to help her into the saddle. Then she blamed me when she fell on her ass because she hadn’t tightened the strap properly—like I tried to tell her.
I’d breathed a sigh of relief when we finally got on the trail, but that relief had been short-lived. When I pointed out poison oak halfway through the ride, and warned everyone to keep away, she’d insisted I was wrong, that it was box elder, not poison oak, going so far as to pick it and rub the goddamn leaves across her arms in an effort to prove me wrong. Something she regretted as soon as the rash started forming.
Unfortunately, it hadn’t stopped there, and the rash turned into hives, then blisters, and within minutes, she started struggling to breathe. Fortunately, I kept an epi-pen in the first aid kit stashed in my saddle bag, because not only was she wrong about what the plant was, she also didn’t know she was severely allergic to it.
Heaving out a heavy sigh, I closed my eyes and reached up to pinch the bridge of my nose, hoping it would give me some relief. Thankfully, the ambulance doors shut, closing off the string of very loud complaints from the woman and her husband, and a few seconds later, it drove away, carting the two of them off to the emergency room.
I heard the sound of boots crunching on the gravel just before Zach’s palm came to rest on my shoulder. “Heard you’ve been havin’ a hell of a day.”
