Page 31 of Don't Go Faking My Heart

He still doesn't move.

His eyes move beneath his lids, and his brows knit together in his sleep. His face is resting on his arm, and with his forehead screwing up tighter and tighter, he looks … troubled.

Pained.

His breathing hitches, and his fist balls up, all while his expression twists. Then he flinches, and I rock back, afraid I've done something to disturb him.

But no, it's his dream.

Or is it a nightmare?

Without thinking, I put my thumb between his eyebrows and press softly, smoothing the deep furrow until it softens and his nightmare seems to pass. I whisper a "shhh" and run my hand in his hair, letting my fingertips graze his scalp.

His hair is unreal. It's soft and silky and even better than petting a therapy llama. He has to use conditioner, right? But it's not like I can ask him that. Like, oh, hey, I was petting your hair earlier and couldn't help noticing how smooth it is.

I lean in closer to smell his hair.

Because that's not weird.

Okay, it's super weird. But I genuinely need to know what is making his hair like this. I'm a hair girl! The Curly Girl method is part of my identity, and if there's a conditioner out there that can add this kind of softness, I need to know. I'm not just running my fingers in his hair over and over because the sensation of each strand brushing against the sides of my fingers is sending waves of tingles up my arm, or anything.

I close my eyes to heighten my sense of smell—is that a real thing?—and I breathe in deeply.

Eucalyptus. And something minty.

I love mint.

I take another whiff.

And of course, that's when Rusty stirs.

"Am I dreaming, or are you smelling my hair?"

CHAPTER NINE

RUSTY

It's only nine a.m. Monday morning when I pull into Patty's, the bar that lies directly in between Sugar Maple and Mullet Ridge—named after the fish, not the hairstyle.

Mullet Ridge is ten miles west of Sugar Maple, and it's more than ten times bigger. It has the kind of amenities Sugar Maple lacks, including an ice rink, a Triple-A baseball team, restaurants, some big box stores, and the emergency room Tripp, Duke, and I spent more than a little time in while growing up.

My visits weren't like theirs, though.

I slam the door to my truck and those memories at the same time. My boots crunch against the dirt and rocks of the unpaved parking lot as I walk up to the bar.

The sign on the building says "Donegal's Tavern" in a Celtic-inspired serif font the designer in me loves but the troubled teen in me still hates. My dad didn't frequent Donegal's—he favored bars that didn't take his keys or cut him off quite so proactively—but I picked him up here a handful of times as a teen, including the last time …

I spent so much time picking up my dad from bars, and I spent even more time praying he wouldn't be there at all.

He was always there.

Sugar Maple is a dry town, so Arlo Fielding all but lived in Mullet Ridge. My senior year, he caused an accident that killed my little sister and paralyzed Patty and Sean's dad from the waist down. Arlo was thrown from the car but came out unharmed.

My mom was already a shell of a woman after twenty years of Arlo's crap, but that shell became paper thin. Arlo entered court-ordered rehab, and once he proved himself, Tag Carville gave him a job working on the farm and running a fruit stand. Arlo always hated Tag. Thought he was uppity just because he turned his family farm into one of the biggest in the country. But he wasn't too proud to take his money.

I loved Tag, but I wasn't too proud to take his money, either.

The truth is, Tag left me a chunk of change in his will. Enough to pay off my student loan debts, buy a house and a new truck, and put the rest in a hefty rainy day fund for my mom, if she ever works up the nerve to leave Arlo.

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