Page 85 of Unromance

With a sigh, she bent over, rushing to scoop the books back into the now handleless bag before the elevator doors opened on her floor.

By some miracle, she made it from the elevator to the bar without the whole thing toppling over again.

“Sawyer!” Alex crooned. He easily hefted the bag from the bar top to the back counter. “I was just thinking about you. We got this new whiskey in—” Reaching up, he grabbed a bottle from the top shelf. “Local. You have to try it.” He plopped the bottle in front of her before disappearing to grab a tumbler.

As Sawyer picked up the bottle, her insides went cold. Leaving her apartment had definitely been a mistake. Blind Faith Distillery. She traced the distiller’s signature at the bottom of the label. She would never forget the crooked way Sadie wrote her s’s. She wanted to shatter the bottle against the ground, or to steal it like Sadie had done to Sawyer’s reader-signed copy ofAlmost Lovers. But that would only hurt Alex, not Sadie, and leave Sawyer feeling worse.

“Have you had it before?” Alex asked, grinning, completely oblivious that he’d presented her with her ex’s pride and joy.

Shaking her head, she flipped the bottle over to read the back.

“I’ve got time for a tasting before the lunch rush,” Alex offered, grin faltering at her uncharacteristic silence.

“No, thank you,” she said distractedly, her attention snagging on an address at the bottom of the label. “I have to go,” she said suddenly. Tugging her phone from her pocket, she typed the address into her Maps app before handing the bottle back to a befuddled Alex. “Thank you!”

“I didn’t do anything,” he called after her, already halfway to the elevator.

Sawyer didn’t normally believe in signs, but she was in a weird place right now. The elevator dinged to announce its arrival—the same one she’d met Mason in. Mason, who wasn’t afraid of his past, to learn and grow and heal.

She knew what she had to do.

The hour and a half drive to Indiana went by in a blink. Sawyer hadn’t crossed this state line in years. This place knew too much. Toomany memories better left in the past. She’d thought that was where Sadie belonged, too, but Sawyer was beginning to realize she’d never really left Sadie there. She’d been dragging around that hurt for years, never letting it heal. Just like the hurt she felt over theAlmost Loversadaptation.

As she pulled into the gravel parking lot of the distillery, she began to shiver with nerves. Was this a dumb idea? She probably should have thought this throughbeforedriving all the way here. With shaking hands, she opened the door, stepped out into the frigid air, and forced her feet to carry her inside.

The minimalist warehouse exterior gave way to a warm, industrial interior. Scarred wooden beams adorned the ceilings, and rustic Edison bulbs hung from them, illuminating the space in a golden glow.

“For one?” the tattooed hostess asked over the heavy metal blaring from the speakers.

“Um.” Sawyer cleared her throat. “I’m looking for Sadie. Is she in?”

The hostess raised a heavily penciled brow. “May I ask who’s inquiring?”

Sawyer bit the inside of her cheek. “Oh, uh, we go way back. She has something of mine.”

“And she’s expecting you?”

“Not exactly,” Sawyer confessed with a self-deprecating smile.

The hostess gave her an assessing once-over. “Your name?”

“Sawyer Greene,” a voice to her left said.

Sawyer stiffened as if struck by lightning. Turning slowly, she inhaled sharply as her gaze landed on Sadie.

If this were one of Sawyer’s books, she’d write somethingdramatic likeShe looked exactly as she remembered. But that wasn’t true. Sadie was impossibly better looking. Sadie wiped her hands off on a bar towel, wringing it between her tattooed hands like she probably wanted to do Sawyer’s neck right now. Her pale blue eyes were bright against her tanned skin—how was she so tan in February? Her brown hair was shaved along one side, and Sawyer remembered exactly why she’d allowed this beautiful creature to break her heart in the first place.

“Hi,” she managed.

Tossing the towel onto the bar top, Sadie unhooked a carabiner of keys from her belt loop. “I’m headed out,” she said to the hostess. To Sawyer, she jerked her head toward the door. Grabbing her coat from the hook, Sadie shrugged on a camel-colored Carhartt.

“What are you doing here, Sawyer?”

Sawyer swallowed the lump in her throat. “Asking myself the same thing, actually.” She’d come here to put her foot down, to demand Sadie give her book back, but somewhere along the drive, her anger had given way to something softer, something deeper and infinitely more sad. “I want my book back,” she forced herself to say.

Sadie’s brows pinched together. “What book?”

Aaaand the anger was back. “You know what book,” Sawyer hissed.

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