Tina scoffed.
“Go easy on the self-recrimination, okay? I don’t know exactly what’s going on between you and Smith, but I feel likeyou’ve accepted an unfair share of the blame. Also, quite honestly, I could have tried harder myself. But I’m socially awkward and so are you, so it was bound to be a shitshow of misunderstandings.”
Kenny chuckled and the sound ended on a little sob.
“I do cultivate ado not touchair. I always thought it was better for people to think I was a rampant, ice-cold bitch than to recognize that I’m just never sure how to get along with people. Other women especially.”
They shared an understanding smile upon finally seeing that their similarities outweighed their differences.
“Right, I have to get going,” Tina said. “Libby’s going to murder me if I’m late for this meeting.”
Libby—Olivia Chapman—was Tina’s best friend, sister-in-law, and the head chef at her restaurant.
Kenny nodded and watched as the other woman left in a flurry of movement and warm smiles.
As Tina drove off with a cheerful honk, Kenny sank down onto the rickety old porch swing—seriously, did every house in this town have one of these?—alone, lonely, and suddenly filled with self-doubt and regret.
Why was she staying here?
Nobody aside from Tina thought she should be here. Part of Kenny knew that they were right.
But, as she had told her brothers, she was tired. She needed to regroup and recover. And this place right here was where she was going to do that.
“Fuck!” Smith glared down at the hook snagged in the heel of his hand. He muffled a few more swear words as he carefully manipulated the barbless hook from his flesh.
It stung like a sonofabitch.
His own fault for not paying attention to what he was doing. He didn’t evenlikefishing, he’d just needed to get out of the house for a while.
It still smelled likeher.
Sheer desperation had driven him to picking up the fishing rod and tackle box he’d discovered in the small garden shed and driving to thisbest ever—according to Harris and his buddies—fishing spot at the estuary which had given the town its name.
He hadn’t hooked a fucking thing all morning. Aside from his own damned self, of course.
He wrapped a dirty rag—also courtesy of the tackle box—around his bleeding hand and packed up everything, stifling the frustrated urge to toss the lot into the river. But this wasn’t his stuff and it wouldn’t be very environmentally friendly of him.
He’d hoped that this activity would prove therapeutic. Take his mind off everything. Instead, he’d been bored to death with nothing to dobutthink. About Kenna, their failed marriage, and her confusing and infuriating insistence on remaining in town.
Worse, he had taken one look at that place she was so eager to rent and despised the very notion of Kenna staying in that dusty, moldy hovel.
It had taken every ounce of his willpower not to drag her kicking and screaming back to his own tiny rental.
He was seething as he lugged the equipment back to his vehicle. Resentful of the fact that her mere presence in town was already fucking with his peace of mind. He angrily tossed everything in the back of the car, muttering under his breath.
He hated feeling this way all the time.
Pissed off. Infuriated. Aggrieved.
Concerned.
Because she was different, and it troubled him.
He hated that she chose to show him the vulnerability she’d kept hidden for the entirety of their marriage now, when it was too late.
It felt fucking manipulative.
And he despised her for that.
