Page 16
“I’ll walk you out,” Trey calls, propping the broom up against the wall as I grab my purse from beneath the bar. Trey meets me by the door and drapes his arm over my shoulders as we step out into the muggy night, the sound of chirping crickets greeting us.
“How are you really doing, Em?”
Plastering a smile on my face, I peek up at him. “Trey, I’m fine. I swear. You don’t need to worry about me so much.” I wrap my arm around his waist and give it a squeeze to reassure him but I still see the doubt in his eyes.
“It’s my job to worry about you.”
“Yeah, well, just remember that I let you off the hook when you develop an ulcer from stressing so much.”
He laughs, gently kicking my foot as we walk across the gravel lot. “Noted.”
“And, you would have so much more time to worry about your own love life if you stopped obsessing over mine,” I tease him but his gaze is locked on something in front of us. He stops short, his eyes narrowing and I glance around us, trying to figure out what caught his attention.
“What the fuck?” he growls, taking a step toward my car with a clenched jaw and I turn, blowing out a breath when I see what got him so riled up. All four of my tires have been slashed. A rock drops into the pit of my stomach when I catch sight of the single red rose and note trapped under the windshield. It brings back the memory of when I first met him, so vivid that I can remember every detail like it’s a video playing in my mind.
Tentatively, I step toward the car and free the note from the windshield before unfolding it with shaky hands and a pounding heart.
Did you forget who
you belong to?
Sucking in a breath, tears sting my eyes and I’m barely holding back the sob that wants to rip free. Trey grabs the note from my hand and quickly reads through it before crumpling it in his fist.
“Motherfucker,” he seethes, running a hand through his dirty blond hair as he paces back and forth in front of me. Finally, he turns to me with wild, angry eyes. “Tuck and I are going to deal with this asshole once and for all.”
“You know you can’t, Trey,” I whisper, tossed right back into the hell I was in a year ago. How is it so easy for him to destroy everything I thought I was building?
Trey runs a shaky hand through his hair again before letting out a roar. It echoes off the buildings around us and I flinch on instinct. Thankfully, he doesn’t see because that would only add fuel to the fire.
“Why would he do this? Why now?” Trey asks and I shrug.
“I don’t know.”
Except that’s not exactly true. It has to be because of my lunch with Phoenix today. All this time, I thought I was gaining some freedom but he’s always been watching. I hate that as soon as I even begin to think about truly moving on with my life, he’s right there to remind me of all the reasons that I’ll never be able to.
