And this feels wrong.
My palms itch like I want to put my fists through a wall. My lungs won’t quite fill, no matter how deep I breathe.
It’s like watching a foreign film without subtitles—everything’s happening right in front of me, and I can’t understand a goddamn thing.
The phone rings.
I grab it so fast I nearly knock my coffee over, heart already sprinting.
“Willow?”
“Thatcher?”
Kelly.
“Fuck,” I mutter, dragging a hand down my face.
“Well, that’s a greeting,” she snaps. “Nice to hear your voice too, baby brother.”
“Sorry,” I grind out. “I’m just?—”
Waiting. Worrying. Losing my damn mind.
“Never mind. How are you?”
“How am I?” she echoes. “Healing. Bored. Trapped in my house with daytime TV and your brother-in-law’s terrible cooking.”
I exhale. Just a fraction. “Good.”
“Uh-huh. You’re wound tight, Thatch.” Then her voice shifts. Sharper. “You waiting on Willow?”
My gut twists. “Have you heard from her?”
“Well, I heard about her.” She pauses, lets it land. “And I heard what she heard.”
My spine goes rigid.
“Kelly.”
“Don’t take that tone with me. I’m not the one who let mygirlfriend—thanks for telling me about that, by the way—walk into the bank at the exact moment Darla Stern waltzed back into town.”
My heart drops straight through the floor.
“What?”
“Two of the biggest gossips in the county were there,” Kelly continues, merciless. “They had plenty to say. About Darla. About you. About the engagement. About why it ended.”
The room feels too small. Too tight.
Fuck.
“She heard all that?”
My voice is rough. Dangerous.
“She walked out, Thatch.” Kelly softens just a notch. “Didn’t finish her business.”
Images slam into my head—Willow standing alone in that bank.
