Tears well up, but I refuse to let them fall, Harper’s words affecting me greatly. Other than Aunt Natalie, I don’t have any family. Mom and Dad are gone, and Amelia… she and I haven’t been sisters in a long time—if we ever were. Amelia was my bully. My tormentor. The person put on this earth to make my life a living hell. She was never my sister.
Harper lets me go from her comforting embrace. “Will you tell me the whole story someday?”
I puff my cheeks and blow out a rush of air. “Someday,” I flat out lie.
She’s only gotten snippets of the disjointed, inebriated version of what happened. There is no way in hell I’m going to tell her the full story. Jordan may be a shitty person for the way he treated me, but he’s her brother and she loves him. The “Jorey” she talked about while we were at CU was a wonderful, supportive, loving brother. Harper has had so much taken away from her already. I’m not going to allow my opinion of Jordan or what happened between us to mess up their relationship. She needs her newfound family.
“I told Jordan to disappear for the rest of the evening, so the coast should be clear if you want to come back out and have dinner with me. Talk. Laugh. Try to beat you at pool.”
I catch her smile in the mirror. She and the rest of her CU crew never won a game off me at pool.
Besides, the thought of eating anything right now makes my unsettled stomach churn with nausea. Food and I have been enemies for a long time. After years of therapy, I came to understand my emotional dependence on food as a coping mechanism. Once Mom died, food became my obsession. Eating, a way to avoid the pain. It was a destructive, unhealthy cycle of behavior I couldn’t stop. After that night with Jordan, I spiraled into a very dark place, and it cost me. Greatly. I look down at the multitude of bracelets stacked on my wrist.
“Do you mind if we call it? I’m more tired than I realized.”
I spent most of the day talking to Natalie’s doctors and specialists. My aunt is the reason I came back to Woodspire. Harper doesn’t know about Natalie’s diagnosis.Ididn’t even know until last week. My aunt never told me, never gave me the slightest hint, that she was sick.
Lost in the bleak black hole of my thoughts, I jump when Harper says, “I’ll walk you to your car.” She opens the bathroom door and waits for me to follow.
The sounds from the bar accost me as soon as we step out into the hallway. The storage closet pulls my gaze like a neodymium magnet, but I force my eyes to face forward. I refuse to succumb to the memories of that night. The pleasure, and the pain.
As Harper and I walk past the tables and outside into the stifling, sticky air, I breathe an immense sigh of relief when I don’t see Jordan anywhere. Pole lights illuminate the parking lot, casting soft shadows. The music from inside Mickey’s pours out into the night as a group of guys who just arrived in a large crew cab truck enter the bar.
“Let’s plan a girls’ night soon. Maybe this weekend? We can binge the new season ofThe Boysand paint each other’s nails,” she suggests.
I take the car fob from my pocket and unlock the doors to the Toyota. “I’d like that.”
Harper grabs my hand just as I place my right foot on the mat of the footwell. “Text me when you get to Natalie’s, so I know you got home safe.”
Home. I’m not sure where my home is anymore.
I give her a playful eye roll. “Yes, Mom.”
She takes a breath, opens her mouth, stops, and tries again. “I’m really glad you’re here.”
I can’t reply to that because I’m not. If it weren’t for my aunt, I would never have stepped foot in this town again. Instead, I say, “It’s really good to see you. I’ve missed my friend.”
She helps shut the car door, and I sit there until she walks back inside Mickey’s, then start the engine.
Just as I ease my foot on the gas and back out of the space, I scream bloody murder when a large body slams into the driver’s side of the car, fist pounding on the glass.
“Douglass, stop the fucking car! We need to talk,” an angry Jordan shouts.
Holy shit!
I do what any sensible woman would do when confronted with an angry man trying to rip her car door off with his bare hands.
I stomp on the gas, wheels throwing up gravel as they spin to catch traction and give him the middle finger as I leave him standing in the parking lot, eating my dust.
Fuck you, Jordan Hammond.
Chapter 6
“You did.”
I slept with Douglass Donnelly. I slept with Amelia’s sister. And I don’t remember a single fucking second of it.
I could call Mike a liar. Laugh at the joke he’s trying to pull. But neither would be true.
