Just because I was miserable and frustrated over him, didn’t mean I needed to punish him. Although that had kind of been my MO for my entire life.
“There,” I said with a flourish of my hand when we’d reached the Corolla. “I made it safely. You can return to your date now.”
He glared at me. “My date?”
“Kristen.”
“Kristen?”
I just rolled my eyes and pulled my car keys from my purse. “It’s funny how history repeats itself, huh?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I saw you chatting her up at the bar. Don’t pretend the high school flame isn’t still burning. She’s been trying to get back together with you since you got back to town.”
His frustrated stare turned lethal. “I ended things with Kristen seven years ago. You might remember the night well. It’s the same night you got pregnant.”
That was enough to have me biting my tongue and wishing I could crawl into a cave and never come out. Wrenching open the Corolla door, I said, “She’s still into you.”
“And I’m still not into her.”
Sighing in frustration, I managed a small apology. “I shouldn’t have said that about you and Kristen.”
He folded his arms over his chest and moved back a step. “No, you shouldn’t have.”
“I’m going to leave now.”
“Probably for the best.”
Immense sorrow pressed against my chest, crushing my fragile heart inside as I plopped into my driver’s seat and shoved my keys into the ignition.
Netflix, I whispered to my deflated spirits. We can ring in the New Year with Netflix.
I turned the key and was greeted by a sputtering, whining, not-turning-on engine. “No,” I hissed at my piece of crap car. Turning the keys again, I closed my eyes and prayed for a New Year miracle. “Please, please, please,” I chanted alongside the brum, brum, brum of my useless engine.
Levi let me struggle and shiver for five more minutes before he said helpfully, “It’s not going to work.”
I glared at him. “Sometimes if I just…” I tried it again without a positive response.
“Come on.” He tilted his head. “I’ll call you a tow truck, but you can wait inside my apartment, so you don’t freeze to death.”
He started off across the parking lot toward the antique store across the street and I was forced to hurry after him. “That’s all right, I can just ask Coco—”
“For once, please don’t argue with me, Ruby.”
So, I didn’t. I let him lead me up the side staircase to a loft very similar to Coco’s. He flipped the lights on when we stepped inside, and I was greeted with a very warm, very manly space of rich leather couches and a giant TV.
It was also eighty degrees warmer inside and I let out a sigh at the feeling of my skin beginning to thaw.
I was immediately drawn to printed photographs in big frames hung around the cozy space. A group of stallions against the backdrop of a breathtaking sunset, a single horse, his snout facing the camera, the white patch over his eye seemingly too pure for an animal, a lone cowboy on the back of another mighty steed, his body a perfect specimen of the male form, his wide-brim cowboy hat an interesting, nostalgic touch.
“These are incredible,” I whispered, forgetting my purpose for being in his apartment to begin with.
“Thank you.” His voice was softer in this place, his private space. Less hard, less… distant.
There was pride in his answer, an ownership that whispered he had more purchase in them than simple buying power. “Did you take them?” I asked in a reverent whisper.
I glanced over my shoulder in time to see him nod his head. “Mementos of my travels.”
