Fuck him. She didn’t want to be with him anyway. It didn’t matter that he was fucking someone else. It wasn’t like she’d been sleeping with him. Maybe once a month, at most. Thank God for alternating schedules and condoms because God only knows what diseases he might’ve passed to her.
The bastard.
Once she’d crossed the threshold with all her shit, Bailey jerked the door shut as hard as she could. It hit her foot and bounced back, ruining her dramatic exit. She heard a cackle from Seth and decided he could get his happy ass up and shut the door his damn self.
She grunted and groaned as she jerked her suitcase down the stairs. It twisted and tumbled, dumping her bag when it fell. With tears in her eyes, she crouched down to clean it up.
“You’re gonna be fine,” she mumbled to herself.
Of course, that was a platitude she told herself because she honestly didn’t know where she was going to go. Her mother’s? It was always an option, she knew, but the thought of putting her mother out like that didn’t sit well. Plus, she didn’t want her mom to think she’d gone and screwed everything up with Seth. After all, Bailey was the one who’d defended him to her family when they’d attempted to make her see reason.
Stupid Seth.
Standing tall, Bailey repositioned the bag so it wouldn’t fall, then grabbed the suitcase handle and started down the driveway. Her suitcase bounced and wobbled until she reached the asphalt road. When it leveled out, she set her feet in motion and started the trek into town.
Maybe she should go to Moonshiners. There was a small room in the back with a single cot. It would do in a pinch. Then in the morning, she could call Rex and take him up on the offer to stay in the guest room until she could move her things into the apartment. She had enough money in the bank to cover the cost of renting the room for a little while. Maybe he’d give her a discount until she officially started working there.
But first, she had to get to town.
She’d gotten good at getting the three-mile walk down to an hour and fifteen minutes. It wasn’t as easy with the suitcase bogging her down, but it was doable. She managed a decent pace, so it only took an hour for her to near the outer edge of downtown where the sidewalks began. At least here, she wasn’t dodging cars. Not that there’d been many. Not this time of night.
Lucky for her, Moonshiners closed at midnight on most weeknights if the crowd was thin, so she wouldn’t risk anyone seeing her pathetic entrance.
What wasn’t so lucky was that, based on the empty parking lot, it appeared Rafe had shut things down already. Which meant she couldn’t get in the building because only Rafe and Mack had keys.
Her gaze swung toward the B and B, then across the park to the bookstore. More specifically, the apartment above it.
Truth was, she hated to impose on either of the Sharpe brothers. She knew Rex would let her in, but it would require her to wake him up, and setting that sort of precedent with her boss felt wrong. The idea of asking Rafe for a place to stay didn’t feel any better. He was clearly pissed off at her, and until she could figure out why, she wasn’t eager to rehash that argument.
“Well, Mom, I sure hope you’ve got that extra blanket in the back,” she muttered as she tugged her suitcase toward the bakery. Shedidhave keys to that.
***
Rafe closed the bar shortly after midnightwhen the last customers left. It had taken tremendous effort not to toss them out on their ass, but he figured they’d call Mack, and since his boss didn’t give a shit that his cell phone was dead and there wasn’t a spare charger sitting around, Rafe had reined in his patience and waited them out.
Now he was waiting for the damn phone to get enough juice to turn on.
Pulling his shirt off and tossing it onto the chair, he strolled to the refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of water. He would’ve preferred a beer, but that would require a trip to the grocery store in the next town. Something he would not be doing in the middle of the damn night.
Granted, a trip out would be far less pathetic than pacing the floor, waiting for the air conditioner to cool the room down from sauna to tolerable and for his cell phone to turn on. Waiting to find out if he’d missed any calls or texts from Bailey. He hated how he left things with her this morning. It had been a complete dick move on his part but keeping her at a distance was the best thing for her.
He glanced at his phone, willing the damn screen to flash on.How fucking long does it—
The screen flashed with the glowing red battery symbol, showing it was charging.
“Finally. Shit.” Rafe capped the water bottle and set it down before snagging his phone.
He tapped the screen. Nothing happened. He could see the little lightning bolt showing it was charging, but apparently, there wasn’t enough juice to pull up the unlock screen.
He took a deep breath and dug for more of the patience he’d relied on earlier. It wasn’t nearly as easy as it looked. He wasn’t a patient man. Never had been. And this was beyond ridiculous. Rafe couldn’t remember the last time his cell phone had died. Of all days for it to happen…
His phone beeped.
“Fuckin’ finally,” he grumbled, picking up the phone and tapping to pull up the notifications.
A relieved sigh escaped when he noticed four text messages and two missed calls from Bailey, one call from a number he didn’t recognize, and a voicemail.
He tapped to open the messaging app, then clicked on the image of her.
