“Just a caramel latte please.”
Oh hell no.
“No, you need food. Get whatever you want.”
“Um…eggs on toast?”
I kept my eyes on her, and Dahlia cleared her throat to stop me. She knew me far too well.
“Darlin’, how about I get the chef to whip up some eggs benny. His hollandaise sauce is to die for.”
I saw the light in her eyes, and the shy smile on her lips told me she liked that. “Oh, if it’s not too much trouble.”
“You’re good, darl.”
Dahlia moved off to put the order through, and I made a mental note to remember the breakfast she seemed to like.
“Why are you nervous?”
“I’m not.”
“Rowan, cut the shit. I remember meeting you as a feisty and sassy girl who liked to party. Now, you’re always looking over your shoulder, watching what you say, and eat. Who did that to you?”
She sighed. “It was an act. I mean, not really…but kinda. I want to be that carefree girl who doesn’t care what people think. I want to be fierce, and be a total badass. I guess I had that with Trey. He was my safety net. And now I don’t have that, and I’ve been reminded of my past.”
It killed me that anyone has ever made her feel less than.
“Trey told me you knew he was gay.”
She looked up at me, her eyes wide for a moment, before she looked back down at her hands. “He told you?”
“He did.”
“Did you go off the rails like his mother?”
“No. I don’t give a fuck who he fucks, so long as he’s happy. We’ll talk about his addictions later, but I want to know how you knew. He said he never told you.”
She had a sad smile on her face. “A girl knows, Wyatt. When she’s not being touched, when he doesn’t seem interested in you sexually, but can’t wait to take you out to the movie he’s been dying to see. He confided in me. He was my best friend for three years, two we spent trying to make it work because we were both scared of what it meant if it didn’t.”
“What did Celine say to him?” I asked, hoping his mother hadn’t done too much damage. When we broke up, she had gone on a religious freak out, and tried everything to get me on the right path to God. I’d told her where to stick her bible, and since then we had very limited contact. I thought she could have dragged Trey down into it too, but he seemed to have pulled away at the right time.
“That he was no longer welcome in her life.”
Fuck. I was glad he had Rowan to help him through that.
“Is that when the addiction shit started?”
“I actually don’t know when she said it to him or when he came out to her. I still think he’s in denial sometimes. I only found out because I overheard a voicemail message when he was playing them, thinking I wasn’t home, but yeah, the addiction shit started about a year ago. It got pretty bad. I thought…I thought he was going to hurt me. When he realised, and I moved into the second room, he stopped drinking, but he started doing other shit. All I could do was be there for him.”
“And it got you hurt.”
She shrugged, and it was the hardest thing to see her act like it was just another regular thing that happened. Like it wasn’t the worst thing to have ever happened to her, and that crushed me in ways I couldn’t explain.
“Tell me about your family. I don’t know anything about them.”
Our breakfast arrived, and her eyes widened at the sight of it. Crossbones wasn’t your average joe diner, we had a five star chef on board who wanted a simpler life than working in Michelin restaurants.
“This looks amazing.”
