She stares at me while I debate how much I’m willing to say.
“What’s happening here?” Aspen whispers to Cash.
“I don’t know, but if I can open this phone, I’d be happy to answer those text messages with a voice message explaining what happens to dudes who presume to know what a woman wants better than she knows it herself. I mean, assuming she doesn’t want to be with a dicknugget who calls her names and implies she’s miserable when I’ve never seen her anything but happy. And also engaged to one of my best buddies. Who would never order her around like that.”
Sloane’s lips wobble, and I can’t tell if she’s going to smile or cry.
Possibly both.
There’s a shine coming into her eyes too.
“Did you have to deal with that all day today?” she asks me.
“Yes.”
“Was it annoying?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” She holds a hand out and makes thegive it backgesture to Cash as the phone dings one more time.
“How many messages has he sent you?” I ask.
“Just these four—five now. All in the last few minutes.”
“You see him today?”
“No.”
“Did he see you?”
She blinks once.
Then twice. “I…I don’t know.”
Unlikely, but I have to ask.
I showed Giselle a picture of him this morning before they left. If he was close enough to see Sloane, he would’ve been close enough for Giselle to spot him.
If Giselle spotted him, she would’ve taken care of him.
And that would’ve necessitated an update to Levi, who can be a dick sometimes, but he wouldn’t have been the kind of dick to not tell me about it today.
“Seriously, tell us where we’re headed, and we can have a half dozen of us teaching him a lesson before dawn,” Cash says.
Sloane doesn’t answer.
She’s staring at her phone.
At the text messages from Nigel.
And that’s when it all goes to hell.
It starts with her rolling her shoulders. Then with a mulish expression settling over her features.
She flips off her phone and snaps a selfie, and that’s the last thing she does before everything becomes a blur.
“Noooo,” Aspen gasps. She dives for Sloane, knocking her off the log and sending her phone flying. “Don’t send it!”
