“Don’t be. It’ll take me about an hour to get into the city. Text me what hospital you’re at, okay?”
She let out a relieved breath, sounding a little more settled than when I’d first picked up her call. Her voice was still small as she spoke, but no longer had that tiny tremor to it. “Thank you, Avery. I’ll see you soon.”
“Of course.”
Ending the call, I flipped over to my text thread with her and waited for her pinned location to pop up. The skin around my knuckles was tight for some reason, causing me to glance over at my hand?—
Fuck. Brandon.
Whipping around, I yanked the driver’s side door open to peer into the cab. He was already sitting up with his chair upright, cleaned up and tucked back into his pants like the lastfifteen minutes had never happened. His hair was combed back from his face, looking artfully messy like it always did.
The only remnants of what we’d done was now crusting over on my hand.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted out.
He was already shaking his head, though, reaching for the seat belt to pull it across his body. “Don’t be. You can drop me off at the shop since it’s closer. I have some paperwork to get through anyway.”
I tightened my hand around my phone hard enough that it was going to leave an impression against my palm. It vibrated twice with Carrie’s incoming text.
Fuck, this wasnothow I wanted any of this to end. Blowing him off like this after we just...
I swallowed. “Bran.”
“We’re all good, Avery. Emergencies happen.” But he wasn’t even looking at me while he was saying it, doing everything in his power to avoid making eye contact with me while fiddling with his belt and then the strap that went across his chest.
“Yeah.”
I was so fucking torn.
Carrie needed me. She wouldn’t have called otherwise if I wasn’t a last resort. If there was going to be bad news delivered to her about Eva, she needed someone there. And I wanted to be there for it, too. Eva wasn’t my kid but I still loved her. She was a sweet little girl and would always, in a weird way, be like my baby niece.
She was the reason I even came to the conclusion that having a family one daywouldbe something I looked forward to and wasn’t some far off obligation that I was staving off.
The worst part about all of this was that I was leaving Brandon behind once again to run back to my other life. Back tomy other obligations and responsibilities that would eventually force us to part ways in the end.
I could stay, tell Carrie that something came up. The only downside was that the guilt would eat me alive.
“We should get going.” His voice was soft as he spoke.
My heart lurched in my chest.
Sliding back into my seat, I slotted my phone back into the compartment, the screen automatically connecting to my car’s console and pulling up Carrie’s location. Brandon said nothing while I got buckled in, nor when I pulled back out onto the main street and headed back toward his house instead of the shop like he’d requested.
I doubted he actually had anything to get done at the shop—he was simply trying to make himself as non-inconvenient as possible, despite it beingmewho was the one bailing on us tonight. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the way his fingers twisted together in his lap while he stared out the passenger window.
There was so much I wanted to say, to explain, but nothing was coming out. No matter how hard I was trying to force my mouth to work out some kind of sentence to apologize again.
WhatcouldI even say to make any of this not awkward as hell, though?
I’d felt kind of lost and confused when he’d left me last night after blowing me and now here I was returning the favor.
I’d tried not to read too much into him leaving as anything other than a spontaneous response to what the hell we’d gotten up to. The tentative approach to seeking him out at the shop to test the waters again, to see if he was going to avoid me at all costs or if he’d just been surprised by the turn of events, had been nerve wracking.
Finding out it was the latter was more of a fucking relief than getting that phone call about my father’s death.
And now I was fucking it all up.
When I pulled up to his house, he barely let me put the car in park before he was unhooking himself out of his seat and popping the door open.
