I stare at her, heart pounding, head going slightly fuzzy at the sight of her here.
“What thehell,Max?” she breathes, ignoring Dona as my cat comes to curl around her legs, pleading loudly for breakfast. “You can’t run off like that. You can’t just avoid me. That’s so?—”
“Uh, sorry,” Warren says, and Lacey jumps, turning to look at him, clearly realizing for the first time that he’s even here. “Am I interrupting something?”
Warren’s gaze drops to her chest, and at first I want to hit him, then I realize it’s just because she’s wearing my shirt, and then Ireallywant to hit him.
This thing, it’s supposed to be private. I want to wrap Lacey up and keep her here with me forever, with nobody else involved.
“Warren,” Lacey says, glancing back at me. Then, she crosses her arms, glancing between the two of us. “It’s nice to see you again. Sorry for shouting, but Max justdisappearedwhile I was on a phone call. Literallywrote me a noteto tell me he was leaving.”
Warren barks out a laugh. “Of course he did.”
I blink, trying to figure out when this situation shifted so drastically. A few minutes ago, I was driving down the side of the mountain, thinking I might avoid Lacey until she went back to California for my own good. Now, here I am, standing with two people in my small cabin, hands itching to wrap around Lacey’s waist.
She came after me. Even after being on the phone about that promotion, she’s here. My mind struggles with the reality of her presence, comparing it to a truth I’ve finally learned about myself — people don’t tend to stick around me for long.
Lacey and Warren trade comments about me back and forth, detailing their experiences.
Warren tells her about showing up here once, and how I’d pretended not to be home. Despite the fact that my Jeep was in the driveway, and there’s nowhere else I could possibly have been. Lacey tells him about how rude I was to her on the road outside my place, that first day she’d shown up on the mountain.
After five minutes of their joking and commiserating over my preference for a quiet life, I cross my arms and direct my attention toward my apparentfriend.
“Isthere a reason you came all this way?” I ask pointedly, and he rubs a hand over his hair before turning back to me.
“Yeah, actually. Someone in town was wondering if I could get my wood chef to cook up a set for them.”
“Don’t saywood chef.”
“Yeah, because Max is arealchef,” Lacey says, leaning on the counter casually. How she’s so low-key about Warren seeing the fact that we obviously slept together last night is beyond me.
“Ri-ight.” Warren laughs, shaking his head.
“Heis, though. He’s made me dinner a few times and it’s great.”
“You’venevermademedinner,” Warren says, turning to me with a pout.
Yeah, I want to retort, I’ve also never slept with you.
“You should come here for dinner, before it gets too cold,” Lacey says. “That way we can eat outside.”
“Hello? Am I included in this decision?” I grumble, and though I know I should be mad, I’m not. The fact that Lacey followed me means something.
There was part of me that thought that phone call might completely erase me from her head. That she might get caught up in work and going home, and write me off as a single fun night in Montana.
Not that it would matter. It can’t matter. Her following me means something, but it doesn’t mean she’s not going to accept the offer. And it definitely doesn’t mean she’s not going back to California.
“No,” Lacey and Warren answer at the same time, and when Dona meows loudly, angrily, I decide to let it be, busying myself instead with the process of getting her food from the fridge and finally feeding her breakfast.
As I move through the motions, mixing in a little bone broth and patting it into the licker mat for her, Lacey and Warren keep up their conversation. I put on a pot of coffee, and when I pass them each a mug, I can’t shake the feeling in the back of my head that, despite how much I like being alone, I actually might enjoy this, too.
CHAPTER 17
LACEY
I’m a mess.
There’s a joke Vanessa likes to make about being a bunch of possums in a trench coat, and right now, I’m just a bunch ofemotionsin a trench coat.
