Because hell, if I had to pick anyone, it wouldn’t be me either.
“Come on, Harps,” Wyatt said. “We need to talk.”
“Yeah we do.” She walked past me, not even looking my way, and fuck, that hurt.
My heart lodged in my throat, and I couldn’t bear to turn around. Wyatt was going to end this. We were over before we’d begun.
“Come on,” Wyatt said, and their footsteps echoed like gunshots as the two of them walked away.
He hadn’t even said goodbye.
My chest spasmed, and I scrubbed at my face. Shit, shit, shit. I was definitely going to cry.
A warm hand landed on my shoulder, but it wasn’t Wyatt.
Owen stood beside me. “He’s not just a fling, is he?”
Apparently I was that transparent. Wyatt’s car started up, and goddamn, he was leaving, and this was it. My body trembled with the rush of adrenaline, as if I could rush after him, beg him to stop, try to convince him I was worth it. But hell, I’d realized long ago no one would ever find me worthwhile.
I sucked in a shaky breath. “You know me, Owen. They’re always just flings in the end.”
For those brief, incandescent moments, I’d hoped.
But all those dreams had just crumbled to dust.
Chapter twenty
Wyatt
There were worse ways for my daughter to find out I was seeing her friend.
Currently, though, I couldn’t think of a single one.
I gripped the steering wheel so hard my knuckles were white, and my mind whirled. The only thing I had to offer was the unvarnished truth. I’d wanted to have this talk with her one on one, introduce it gently.
Not have her catch us mid-date and rumpled from fucking out in the woods.
Harper still hadn’t said a damn word, and the silence was deafening. Shit, I should’ve said something to Rory before we left, but we were both heading in the same direction anyway, since Harper needed to get to her car from Alchemy.
“So, I owe you an explanation,” I started. The fact this could go very badly imprinted on my bones. Being a disappointment to my daughterwas something I wasn’t sure I could bear. Yet the only way to go was forward. We were in unpredictable territory here.
“You do,” she responded. “And if you try to tell me Rory was just checking your piercing, I’m getting out of the car. Don’t care that it’s moving.”
I sucked in a sharp breath. Right. This wasn’t going to go well. My stomach rioted, threatening to upchuck the rum sloshing around there.
“Have I told you I recently figured out I’m bisexual?” I started, which had been my plan from the start.
“This is news to you?” Harper retorted, the first hint of sass peeking through. Her lips twitched a little with the comment, the way she did when she was trying to hold back a snarky comment.
I chewed my lower lip hard enough that I could taste blood. Maybe there was hope. Alchemy wasn’t a far drive from here, but I wanted more time with Harper to have this discussion. I owed it to her. I turned onto a back road, taking a longer route to get there. “Did you have any idea?”
“Dad, you’ve had so many guy crushes over the years,” Harper responded. “It wasn’t exactly hidden.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Okay, but everyone has a crush on Batman.”
“But if you’re going to experiment, you shouldn’t have gone for Rory,” Harper warned, and I swallowed hard. This was where I expected the anger. He was her friend, after all, and she was justified. On top of the fact I was far older than him. “He talks a big game, but he’s more sensitive than he admits. And he deserves better than to be a hookup all the time.”
Wait, what?
