I kick the rock wall outside my mine as hard as I can. Pain shoots up my shin, and I have to catch my instinctive cry. This. Isn’t. Fair.
All I want to do is fall apart and sulk, and maybe throw something at her. Kennedy is mine. He’smine.
I fist both hands in my hair, the sickly churning in my gut almost enough to make me double over. I hate this. I hate it so much.
Wilde’s right. Love is pain.
I turn my back on the rock wall and slide down until I’m sitting in the dirt. I force myself to be still, to keep gritting my teeth and not let these nasty feelings take over.
Kennedy didn’t ask her to come.
She might be pretty and flirty and easy to talk to, but he also hasn’t done anything to make me think he’s interested. He had the chance to date her, and he turned it down.
I suck a deep inhale through my teeth. Jealousy sucks. It’s worthless. And annoying. Like a bruise hovering over my heart, I keep nudging at it for the pain, because it’s easier to do that than be objective. Because if I’m objective, maybe a teeny tiny part of me worries I’ve overreacted.
I let the tension seep out of me, and even as my brain keeps trying to feed me images of the two of them together, I fight back against it.
After our date last night, it isn’t fair of me to doubt him. He opened up against all his worries and trusted me with them. Kennedy was real, raw, and the way we connected after that was more than I ever hoped I’d get with one person.
Things aregood. So instead of playing into my anxieties, I need to let them go. For him.
Because it’s not fair on him to stress that he’s done something wrong—again—when the real issue is me.
Relationships are new, and apparently, jealousy isn’t something I can just get over. It feels as much a part of me as the loneliness, but I owe it to Kennedy not to let it take hold.
Because if it takes over, I don’t trust him.
And if I don’t trust him, we’ve lost.
I refuse to lose.
So I push back to my feet, trying to leave my bruised heart alone, and wipe off my jeans. I’m going to go to work, and everything will be fine. I’ll pretend like I didn’t see Caroline, nomatter how desperately I want to know what they talked about, and I’ll just … get on with it.
There’s nothing else I can do.
I walk back down into Old End for the second time today, trying to ignore how I’m braced for what’s waiting for me. Kennedy and Caroline being all happy, with his brothers speculating about whether they will or won’t get married. It’s hard to acknowledge that maybe I’m taking this deeper than I should because I do think Caroline would be good for him. She’d probably treat him well and be all cute and sweet and make him picnics too.
But I’m never going to give her the chance.
The anticipation is sending my pulse skyrocketing. I don’t want attention. I’ve wandered into all of those unspoken rules Rooney was talking about.
I’m unsettled and on edge by the time I get to the small town with its half-massacred houses looming over me.
But down the other end of the street, Caroline’s car is gone.
With everything crossed that Kennedy hasn’t gone with her, I pick up the pace. My tongue piercing plays at the backs of my teeth, and I listen closely for any hints as to where someone might be.
The white SUV is still parked on the road, so unless theyallwent with Caroline, at least one of them must be here.
I make a right, intending to slip between houses two and three, when I almost slam into someone. Hart grabs my shoulders, like he’s steadying me, but I manage to keep my footing.
“Sorry,” he says, as surprised as I am.
I nod his way and go to step around him.
“Kennedy’s in his room.”
That makes me pause, and I turn to Hart, questioning if he’s setting me up to see something I really don’t want to see.
