Over the top of her shoulder, I see a cell phone trained in my direction. I turn away from it only to find another and another again. This moment will be immortalized forever. My humiliation, trending by noon. Fucking perfect.
Coffee drips down my shirt. It seeps through the fabric to my skin. Ice cubes slide down my stomach and onto the floor. I stand there, frozen, as Jess’s chest heaves with the force of her breathing.
But the longer I stand here, the harder it is to care about the phones, the whispers, or even the cold coffee soaking through to my skin. All I can see is her.
“I deserved that,” I say quietly.
“You deserve a lot worse than that.” Her voice shakes and it breaks my heart. “Five years pass, and you just waltz back into town like nothing happened?”
“Jess,”
“Don’t.” She holds up a hand, and I notice it’s trembling. “Don’t grab my arm. Don’t even say my name like you have anyright to it. I don’t know who you think I am, but I’m going to remind you...”
Her eyes blaze and her face flushes with heat as she tears into me. She’s beautiful when she’s angry. She was always beautiful, but there’s something different about her now. She’s harder. Sharper.
My chest tightens when the truth hits me. She looks like she’s been forged in fire, and it’s a fire I started.
After years of being treated like a celebrity, it’s almost a breath of fresh air. People should call me on my bullshit. It’s long overdue. I know they can sense it. But Jess is the first one to do it in years... and she’s magnificent in her fury.
All that fire and passion was always there. But it simmered beneath her sunny exterior. I used to be the only one who ever got to see it in flashes, and only when I did something stupid at that. Now it’s all directed at me.
She rages and I want to drop to my knees right here on this sticky coffee shop floor and beg for forgiveness. I want to drag her into the back room and make her as wrecked as I feel. I want to pin her against the wall and kiss her until she remembers she’s mine. UntilIremember I have no right to think of her that way anymore. But I lost that privilege five years ago when I walked away.
“I wondered if you’d be back in town when I heard about your knee.” There’s something hurt in her tone. “And then I heard about the money too. Figured you’d make an appearance when there wasn’t anywhere left to go.”
The words hit harder than the coffee. Because she’s right. I didn’t come back for her. I didn’t come back to make things right. I came back because I had nowhere else to go, and she knows it.
I lower my voice. “Jess, can we talk somewhere else? I want to,”
“We have nothing to talk about.” She cuts me off. Jess starts to turn away but then stops and looks back at me over her shoulder. “Stay out of my way, Griffin. This might be your home for now, but it’s my home forever. I’ve built a life here and it’s a good one. I did it on my own and without you. I plan to keep it that way.”
Then Jess marches toward the door. She walks out and lets it fall closed behind her.
I stand there like a jackass in the silence and my coffee-soaked shirt. I watch her until she disappears into the distance. I commit it all to memory. The sway of her hips, the determined set of her shoulders, and the way she doesn’t look back. Not once.
She used to always look back. When she left for class, when she headed to work, when she ran out to grab groceries, she’d stop for me. She’d pause at the door and look back with that smile, like leaving me even for an hour was hard for her.
Now she walks away like I’m nothing and I only have myself to blame.
I run a hand across the tight muscles on the back of my neck.
The barista clears her throat. “Sir? Can I... get you something?”
I look down at myself. At the mess I’ve become in every possible sense. “A towel, maybe. And some dignity, if you have it in stock.”
She doesn’t laugh and that feels right.
I change in my truck.
It’s not dignified, but nothing about today has been. I keep a gym bag behind the seat. It’s an old habit from my playing days. But today I strip off my coffee-soaked shirt in the parking lot behind Bluemoon and don’t give a shit who sees. Let them take pictures. Let them add it to the highlight reel of my humiliation.
Griffin Callahan, shirtless in a parking lot, brought low by a woman with sexy curves and a deadly smile.
I pull a clean shirt over my head and catch my reflection in the side mirror. I look like hell. But more than that, I look like someone who just got exactly what he deserved.
But the thought is immediately followed by another... Worth it. It was worth everything just to see her again. Even furious. Even throwing drinks at my chest.
I think about her face. The way her eyes went wide when she first saw me, just for a second, before the fury took over. Was there something else there? Something underneath the anger?
