Page 25

"Nice girl. Terrible decisions. Woke up alone in a cowboy's apartment on New Year's Day with no ride, no phone charger, and absolutely no dignity left to speak of."

"Ugh!" I whine and grab my cell out of my purse. But it's dead since I never plugged it in last night, too busy letting a man with a devastating smile talk me out of every rule I usually live by. And now I have zero idea how I'm supposed to get back to Carla's, let alone figure out where my overnight bag ended up in all of this.

Three hard raps rattle the front door before I've finished working through the mess of my own thoughts. I freeze, dress half-zipped, hair a disaster, wondering whether I'm supposed to answer Jagger's door.

"Lainey! I know you're in there, open up!" Carla shouts.

Relief crashes through me so hard, my knees nearly buckle with it. I cross the room fast, fumbling with the dead bolt before I finally yank it open.

Carla stands on the landing in jeans and a flannel, hair pulled back in a knot, sunglasses pushed up on her head even though the sky's more gray than bright. Behind her, parked crooked at the curb below, sits my SUV with her trailer hitched to the back of it.

"There you are." She steps past me into the apartment without waiting for an invitation, taking in the state of things with one sweeping glance that misses absolutely nothing. "I've been calling you for two hours."

"My phone's dead."

"Figured as much." She crosses her arms and her jaw tightens. For the briefest moment, her eyes soften before the warmth disappears. "You look like you had a night."

Heat crawls up my neck. "Carla."

"I'm not judging. I'm the one who handed you the dress." She glances toward the bedroom and spouts, "Where is he?"

"I don't know." Saying it out loud makes it worse, somehow, more real than it was standing alone in the bathroom telling myself it didn't matter.

Her eyes turn to slits. "What do you mean?"

I babble, "I woke up, and he was already gone. No note or anything."

Carla's jaw twitches, and a look crosses her face that I recognize from years of watching her defend me against everything from bad professors to worse boyfriends. "That absolute⁠—"

"Don't," I say, holding up a hand, even though some petty, wounded part of me wants her to finish that sentence and mean every word of it. "It's fine. It was one night. I knew what it was."

She shakes her head, and I can tell she's deciding whether to bite her tongue or not. And Carla's never once in her life managed to bite her tongue when it counted.

I peer closer. "What aren't you telling me?"

She looks away.

"Carla?"

She snaps her face back toward me. "He's charming. Genuinely, infuriatingly charming. The kind that makes women forget every single thing they know better than to forget. And I love him like a brother most days, because I'm usually just pissed at Mason."

"Why?" I ask.

Her expression hardens with hurt. "I'll tell you later. This isn't about Mason right now. It's about his jackass brother!"

"Look, you warned me."

"Don't you dare stick up for him!" she warns.

I put my hands in the air. "Okay. I won't."

"Good." She glances around the room, then shakes her head. "He's lower than a snake's belly."

I beg, "Let's just get out of here."

Carla exhales, glancing toward the window like she's bracing herself, then turns back to me with an expression that makes my stomach drop before she's even said a word. "There's something else."

"What?"