Page 71 of Lessons in Heartbreak

I blinked. “Sorry, man. What’d you say?”

My friend grinned. “Said I’m heading out soon to meet up with Lauren. She asked me to meet her at a hotel room to talk, because she wasn’t giving my ‘manwhore ass’ her home address.” He rubbed his hands together. “I’m gonna have a good night.”

With a laugh, I shook my head. “I hope she wants to tie you up and make you suffer.”

“God, so do I,” he sighed. “Tonight was fun.”

I nodded.

He finished his drink, leaning back on the couch while I swirled my empty glass, watching the melting ice cubes clink against the crystal. “You good, Griff?”

I pinched my eyes shut and sighed heavily. “I don’t know, man.”

It was easier to put on the mask at the fair, with dozens of people watching and wanting that transactional exchange from me and Marcus. They got it in spades too. The line ended up snaking through the fair, we both got our asses dunked more than a dozen times, and Ruby’s coworker Kenny kept selling tickets, beaming the entire time.

Ruby, however, never made her way back over to our game, and I knew that was intentional. No matter what I’d done all evening, I couldn’t get her face out of my head.

It wasn’t the shock over what I’d seen; it wasn’t the embarrassment or the tears that kept playing over and over and over on a buzzing loop.

It was the fear.

She was genuinely scared of my reaction.

Carefully setting down the glass, I braced my elbows on the tops of my thighs and held my head in my hands, staring down at the rug. “I think I gotta go,” I said quietly.

“Your friend,” he said knowingly.

I raised my head and pinned him with a look. “Don’t start. We just ... we started a conversation that never got finished, and it was kinda heavy. I want to see if she’s okay.”

He pushed my phone across the coffee table. “Too bad they don’t make a little contraption where you can like, send a message or call her or something.”

My jaw tightened, and I slid my phone into my pocket. “No one asked for your input, smart-ass.”

It wasn’t like he was wrong. I could call. I could text. The end result would likely still be the same—she’d tell me she needed some space, but at least she’d know I was thinking about her. It just wasn’t enough.

Maybe it was selfish, but sitting idle right now was unthinkable. Sending a text, making a phone call—it wasn’t enough. From the moment I saw her again, there was something about Ruby that always, always had me wanting to do more. Be more. Be better, because she deserved that.

However the best version of me would act, that’s the Griffin she’d get.

I stood from the couch and held my fist out to Marcus, and he tapped it with a grin. “Be safe,” I told him. “I hope she makes you cry.”

“Me too,” he answered seriously.

Without overthinking what I was doing or what I was going to say, I hopped into my truck and found myself uncharacteristically nervous as I approached Ruby’s house. It was the first time I’d arrived in the dark, and if there hadn’t been any lights on—warm, inviting yellowy light spilling through the windows in the family room—I might have turned back.

I knocked briskly, then tucked my hands into my pockets as I stepped back from the door. Bruiser’s face shoved the curtain aside in the window, and he let out a couple of happy barks, his whole body wiggling.

At least someone in the house would be happy to see me.

Ruby’s face appeared in a small crack of the door, and it was immediately obvious she’d been crying.

“Hey,” I said softly. “Can I come in?”

Resting her temple on the frame of the door, she stared at me for a second before eventually nodding and backing up, opening the door to let Bruiser through to greet me.

“Hey, buddy,” I whispered, patting his side while he leaned against my legs. “Think you can let me in?”

Ruby clicked her tongue, and he bounded into the house. She was wearing the ivory lounge suit I’d bought her, and I couldn’t stop myself from staring at the high neck with a lightning bolt of comprehension.

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