He gets up and heads to the kitchen with the now-empty bottle of champagne. I stand to follow him but I’m a bit wobbly. Damn, I’m going to have a hangover if I don’t get some Advil and water into me. But I don’t head to the bathroom to grab the bottle of pain meds. Instead, I pause at the island and watch him clean up the kitchen.
He feels my presence and looks over at me. He smiles. His eyes, though, aren’t lying. He’s upset. “You look cute right now.”
Well now… I was not expecting that to come out of his mouth. I look down at my outfit. I had changed into a pair of clingy, pale pink lounge pants and a white t-shirt before the game started, while Conner built a Boy Scout-worthy fire in the wood burner. I’d taken my hair out of the pineapple but hadn’t beaten it into submission with product yet so the curls were wilder than normal. I arch an eyebrow. “You have champagne goggles on right now.”
He chuckles. The sound is deep and robust, and sexy as allhell. I start to tingle and it's not from champagne. "I've thought you were cute since I was nine so no, not the champagne."
“You… what?”
And then my phone goes off, filling the room with the sharp bell sound that is my text message alert. I’m off-balance internally from his little revelation so I walk over to the couch where it’s balancing on the armrest. I reach for it, see the name across the screen, and freeze.
T.P.
“No. Fucking NO,” I chant to myself and quickly open the message.
I’m downstairs.
What the hell is he talking about? I text him those exact words. He can’t mean downstairsherebecause he doesn’t know where I live. That’s on purpose. I haven’t told a single person at the hospital in case it gets back to him and the Garrisons are all sworn to secrecy as well.
My phone pings again.
Jordan Garrison’s barn. I’m here.
“No fucking way,” I say as I march right past the kitchen and Conner.
“What’s wrong?” Conner asks because he’s been watching me unravel, but I ignore him.
I head over to the two large windows right of the television. I see his car before I see him. It’s a cherry red Ford F-150. His winter car. In the summer he drives a vintage Porsche 911. Not good vintage but, like, 90s vintage. A total douche-mobile. I frown. And then I see him. Well, the top of his head. He’swalking around by the barn door, which is always locked. He tilts his head up and I leap back from the window like he’s aiming a weapon at me.
My back slams into Conner’s front. It’s like hitting an actual wall and almost winds me. He grabs my shoulders to keep me steady. I hadn’t realized he’d walked over. “What’s going on?”
“My… he’s… did you tell someone I was living here?” I demand, and there’s no way to keep the panic from my voice. But it’s easily misinterpreted for anger because my panic mode makes my voice hard and aggressive. That comes from the time I spent on the street. You couldn’t show vulnerability. So I’m not at all shocked when Conner’s relaxed, friendly expression starts to slip.
“No. I’m avoiding everyone, remember?” Conner replies. “Who’s out there?”
He steps toward the window and I grab his arm and yank him back. Well, I try. The man is too sturdy and thick to be manhandled by the likes of me. My hand can barely grip his giant bicep. He continues moving forward without a problem. As he tips his head down to peer outside, his light brown hair tumbles forward, grazing the red mark on his forehead from last night. He bristles, which I know means he saw Beckett.
“Why is there an Echolls on Garrison land?” Conner demands and turns on me with a scowl.
This is not the time for my girl bits to get all warm, but they are. Angry Conner is very…appealing. I swallow and try to regain control of myself because this is definitely not the time and probably not the place. “He’s my ex. And that sounded ridiculous. What are you two, Capulets and Montagues? Hatfields and McCoys?”
Conner’s face twists in a series of expressions that include, but are not limited to, confusion, shock, disgust, and disbelief. “You dated an Echolls?”
"Yeah. Tenley has since explained the entire family is a bunch of assholes, but I didn't know that when I met him in med school," I mutter, and my phone dings again. Both of us tip our heads down to read the message.
I saw someone at the window. Just be an adult about this, please!
“Adult?” I repeat out loud in annoyed amazement. “Beckett’s idea of adulting is convincing me to apply for the resident’s program at his hometown hospital and then sleeping with his high school ex behind my back for an entire two years. Two years!”
“He did that?” Conner asks. His eyes dart down to my screen. “You named him T.P. in your phone? Why?”
“Toilet paper because he’s a shit stain, toxic person, trash panda, it stands for a lot of things." I toss my phone on the couch like it's a hot potato and I'm a five-year-old. "And let's not even get into the ring I found in his sock draw. I thought it was for me."
My face heats at the humiliation because I had grinned like a lovesick puppy but as I shoved the ring back under his wool socks, I also found a box of condoms. Opened and half empty. And we hadn’t used condoms since before moving to Silver Bay. But I don’t tell Conner any of those gory details. Not in words. If I say it out loud, those tears building behind my eyes will fall. So I stay silent, but he can see the heat of humiliation reddening my cheeks. Can’t hide that. “I don’t want to see him. I left our apartment with nothing but my medical books, computer, and my suitcase of clothes almost seven months ago. I’ve managed to avoid him and his fiancée ever since, even though we all still work at the same damn hospital in the same tiny town.”
“She’s a doctor too?”
“Nurse. NICU, which luckily I don’t have to deal with onmy psychiatric rounds,” I explain as I pace the floor between the fireplace and the couch. “He’s doing a cardiology specialty. And I confessed this drama to the admin who does the psych scheduling, your cousin Shelby, so she checks his schedule and makes sure we don’t overlap.”
