Page 96 of The Truth About Love

Two years later

Chapter Twenty-five

Summer-Raine

“Order for Summer,” the barista yells, setting my venti caramel macchiato down on the bar before moving swiftly onto the next customer.

For the last few months, I’ve come in every day at seven-thirty to pick up my morning dose of caffeine. The Grind is this cute little hole in the wall tucked into a backstreet and I’d thought it was one of the city’s hidden gems until I’d turned up this morning to find all of Tallahassee’s female population waiting in line for a cup of artisan coffee.

“Is something going on?” I ask Max, who’s wiping down a table to the right of me in his uniform of a black shirt buttoned to the collar and a forest green apron. He’s actually the owner of the café, but he never takes a back seat when it comes to the running of his business. He likes to get his hands dirty and lead from the front.

“Our feature in Sunshine Living came out yesterday.” He grins, white teeth sparkling. “Guess that awful interview and photoshoot I was subjected to was worth it after all.”

“What interview and photoshoot?” I take a sip of my coffee and moan as the caffeine enters my bloodstream.

Max eyes me closely, gaze dropping momentarily to my lips. “The one I told you about last month, remember? With the journo who kept trying to make me take my shirt off.”

“Ah, yes.” I laugh. “I remember now.”

He’d actually met the reporter for Sunshine Living on a blind date. He’d taken her back to his place and shown her the time of her life, making her fall so deeply in love with him that she’d been desperate to get The Grind featured in the magazine. Or that’s how he tells the story, at least.

“Tell me they didn’t use a topless photo of you in the article?”

“Why else do you think all these women are here? It ain’t my milkshake bringing all the girls to the yard.” He winks and I groan. “Seriously, look at this shit.”

He takes a rolled-up copy of the magazine out of his apron and lays it out on the table in front of me, flicking to the double-page spread and motioning for me to look.

He wasn’t joking.

Almost an entire page is taken up with the image of Max sitting on a stool in faded jeans, branded coffee cup in hand and shirt nowhere to be seen. The photographer has caught him mid-laugh and the joy on his face leaps off the page and infiltrates my body. The photo makes me happy. I can see why they used it.

“I look good, huh?” he says, flashing me a cocky grin.

In the short time I’ve known Max, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him without a smile. He’s one of those people who just radiates sunshine and rainbows. It’s why I’ve gravitated so much towards him. Being around him makes me feel good and I need more people like that in my life.

The first time I came here, he’d served me at the counter and made a joke that I can’t remember now, but I do remember that it had made me laugh. He’d hit on me and handled it well when I rejected him and somehow, we became fast friends.

He still makes a pass at me every time we see each other though, but I’ve sort of come to love it. He’s a serial flirt, but completely harmless.

“You know you do.”

He does. My heart may belong to another man, but I can’t deny that Max isn’t incredibly handsome. With his curly dark hair and perpetual boyish grin, he’s an absolute dead ringer for Harry Styles.

“Good enough to let me take you out?” he asks, batting his eyelashes dramatically and making me roll my eyes.

“We’ve been over this, Romeo. I’m spoken for, but good try.”

He sighs wistfully. “Your man doesn’t know how lucky he is.”

No, he doesn’t. But that’s because he’s technically not my man yet.

I’ve been out of rehab for a year now, but I haven’t been to see Auden yet.

It’s not that I’ve had second thoughts, quite the opposite actually. I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life than I am about living the rest of my days with him by my side. Being without him for so long has been like living with a dagger in my heart.

It’s just that I don’t want to start our life together until I know with absolute certainty that I’m ready.

It’s been two long years of self-reflection and accountability, staring my demons straight in the face and learning how to live with them.

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