Page 88 of Bloom

“I mean it,” he insists firmly, forcing my heart into my throat as he repeats himself. “I always want to see you. All the fuckin’ time. The best part of my day is seein’ you and that’s been killin’ me too the last few days, thinkin’ I fucked it all up because I'm a selfish bastard.”

“I'm…” Astounded. Speechless. Dead, possibly. “Confused.”

“Honey, I told you I can't be more than your friend.” Somehow, it stings more hearing it the second time, but the hurt doesn’t linger. Not when he adds, “Not that I don't want to be.”

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She doesn’t yell, but if not for the sleeping baby on her chest, he’s pretty sure she would be screaming.

“She has no idea what she deserves,” she says, calm but fierce, small but terrifying. “But it’s not this half-assed bullshit. Man up or fuck off.”

“And?”

The pestle in my hand stills briefly before I continue grinding dried jasmine inside a mortar. “And nothing.”

Lux pouts. “Really? No second date.”

“Not a chance,” I laugh, bitter and irritated and… done. So done.

I spent the whole night tossing and turning over how done I am. I suffered through a groggy morning shift at Bloom, politely listening to Mrs. Hannigan, the local librarian, rant about teens using her workplace for things other than reading. I slept-walked my way to the ranch and through some menial chores. Now, I’m taking my doneness out on the flowers I dried to make tea.

Lux thinks I’m upset over a failed date. And I am. But Roberto is not who kept me up last night.

Not that I don’t want to be.

What the hell is that supposed to mean? That Hunterwantsme? As… not-a-friend? Really?Seriously? After making it so abundantly clear he doesn’t—that hecan’t give me anything but friendship?He spends his first couple of months at Serenity acting like I’m the personification of the freaking Black Plague, he repeatedly implies I’m useless, he outright calls meembarrassing, but he wants me. He kisses me, he calls it a mistake, he has zero qualms about me dating someone else, but he wants me.Sure.Okay.

I’mkillinghim.

I wish I could ask Lux what it means when a guy says something like that, and then promptly strides off into the night without any kind of a follow-up. Actually no—I wish I could ask her and not receive the answer I know I’ll get, the very reason I haven’t told her. She’ll say it’s because he likes me. The tight, delusional grip she has on that fantastical notion will double down, and she’ll never shut up again.

I’d rather let her think I’m hung up on The Date. On The Italian. On The Dating Someone Other Than Her Brother. And I’ll keep pretending the dull edge of a pestle is grinding something more satisfying than tea.

When the rumbling sound of an engine catches my attention, I glance out the window, only to freeze at the sight of a truck parking a few feet from the house. The tension that grips me is fleeting, dissipating quickly once I realize the flashy GMC is definitely not a dirty old Ford, and the man climbing out of it is definitely not Hunter.

This guy is a few inches shorter, a little less brawny but certainly not slim by any stretch of the word. He’s built with a different kind of bulk, all powerful limbs and honed musclesI can see even from the kitchen window—muscles born from clinging to aggravated bulls for a living.

“Excuse me.” I feign an indignant noise. “You invited Everett James over and didn’t tell me?”

I expect a quip—something undeniably dirty about a different kind of riding the two-time world champion could do. I don’t expect the crash of something shattering as it falls to the floor. Whipping around, I hiss at the broken plate shards dangerously close to Lux’s bare feet. “What happened?”

“What did you just say?”

I frown at my friend’s unusually pale complexion. “Everett James is here.”

Lux… Shefalls. Her face, her shoulders, I swear I even hear her heart plummet. She swallows hard, like she’s choking down bile—she certainly looks one wrong move away from emptying the contents of her stomach. When she glances down at Alex, snoozing in the carrier strapped to her chest, she practically turns green.

“He’s not here for you?”

Panic; that’s what flashes in her dark eyes. The kind of panic I recognize easily, the kind of fear I know all too well too because I feel it all the time whenever someone looks at my life a little too closely. Whenever someone asks me about my dad. Whenever the secrets and the lies I try so hard to keep close to my chest stray a little too far.

“I don’t think so,” Lux croaks.

I hope not,I hear.

I glance back outside, at the man leaning casually against his truck like he has nowhere to be and all the time in the world to get there. “Maybe he’s here for Hunter.”

“Why would he be here for Hunter?”

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