Though he doesn’t let go of my hand.
Sweet Pea sticks her head out of the sling and grins at me.
“You okay?” I ask him quietly.
His eyes say no, but he nods. “Never better.”
Sweet Pea growls.
“That’s what I thought too,” I tell her. “But you can’t make a man talk about his feelings. You can only hope he opens up before you’re tired of how annoying he is.”
To my absolute complete surprise, he pulls me into a hug, squishing Sweet Pea between us and resting his chin on my head.
I wrap my arms around his waist without conscious thought.
And then he sucks in a massive, uneven, rattling breath.
Just one.
He blows it out a lot slower, and his next inhale is steady, but it’s absolutely clear that something definitely happened today.
And he doesn’t want to talk about it.
Why would he?
He doesn’t know my friends well, and I’m leaving in a week.
I wouldn’t want to invest more time and effort in letting me closer right now if I were him.
I shouldn’t want to know more about him either.
This is temporary.
For fun.
Not deep. Not a real relationship.
Liar, my heart whispers.
Like I let it have any say in my life right now.
I’ve recovered from Miller. I think. But I have too many other things coming in my life to have time for a relationship too.
Fletcher lets go and steps back, glancing down as if he doesn’t want to acknowledge that he hugged me as though I was a lifeline. When he looks back again, the old Fletcher mask is firmly in place.
Cocky. Confident. A hint of a smirk lingering on his lips. I wonder if he’s about to tell my three friends that they’re all going to owe him every embarrassing story from their entire lives before he’s done mopping the domino board with them.
“You can let your dog down,” Odette tells him. “But you’re in charge of any messes.”
Clearly she’s talking about Sweet Pea’s messes.
But I can’t help but wonder how many other messes we’ll uncover before the night’s over.
34
Fletcher
I get it now.
