Page 161 of Crushing Clover

I sobbed, shaking my head. “Call Warren now. Tell him you changed your mind.”

He arched a brow. “You think we can’t rebuild things even better? We’ve got a name for ourselves now. We won’t be working out of the old food truck for long.”

“The food truck?”

“It’s busy but fun.” He gave me a cheeky grin. “You’ll like it. There are no tables to wait on, but I’m sure you can find something else to do.”

Saint strode back into the room, carrying a tray, with Rush directly behind him.

“You fucking told her?” Saint snapped, handing the tray to Rush and flicking Lucky’s ear in annoyance.

“She doesn’t need to be thinking about that right now, Luck,” Rush admonished. “We talked about this. It’s the last thing she should be thinking about right now.”

“She needed to know. She was worried.”

“But I’ll never be able to pay you back! That restaurant meant everything, and you threw it away for me?”

Saint sat down beside me and hesitantly wrapped an arm around my shoulders. I slumped against him. I had to be dreaming. There was no way Saint, of all people, was comforting me. This all felt surreal.

“We didn’t throw it away. We exchanged it for something more important. Forsomeonemore important.” He kissed my forehead. Was I dreaming? “Besides, we know how things work now, and we can do it again. Better.”

“But it wasn’t how you saw your lives going.”

He snorted. “Life never works out the way people think it will. It’s chaos. A mess you share with people who give a shit about you, if you’re lucky,” he said to me as though I’d been concussed. “Sometimes love is four people joking around and bitching at each other. You belong with us and that’s it, understand me? I don’t want to hear you second-guessing the decision we made for our family.”

I wanted to keep arguing, but I didn’t have the energy. Giving up, I blew out a long breath, nodding even though I disagreed with their decision. It was probably too late for them to take it back.

All I could do was try to make sure they didn’t regret it.

Saint gave me an awkward but heartfelt pat. He got up and handed me the tray he’d put together. I held it in shaking hands and my eyes swam with unshed tears.

He’d made me a mug of hot chocolate and a plate of freshly toasted Pop-Tarts.

Chapter 33

Even though I’d washed off the worst of the grime, I still felt dirty. Maybe what the guys had done to me in the shower was to blame.

As I stood, waiting for the barista to call my name, I could feel the tips of my ears getting hot. Could people with normal lives tell what three hot men had been doing to me forty-five minutes ago?

They wanted me to go to therapy, but for now, knowing they loved me was all the therapy I wanted. Between deciding where we were going next, selling the house, and packing everything up, I hadn't had a chance to dwell on things. There would be time for a real therapist after we reached the East Coast and the guys got the food truck up and running.

When it came to having sex with them in the aftermath, they hadn’t pressured me at all, but I hadn’t been able to resist them for long—and as soon as the doctors had given me the all-clear, every condom left in the house had gone in the trash.

“Clover?” the barista called.

I stepped forward, but he only shoved one coffee cup at me.

“Sorry, but I ordered three black coffee and a hot tea.”

He looked up at me and frowned. “Miss, you ordered one chai latte.”

“Chai latte?” a woman said from a few feet away. “I ordered a large.”

The barista looked from me to her and back again.

“Uh—sorry.”

The woman and I glanced at each other and exchanged polite smiles. When my brain registered her face, I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out. The floor beneath my feet started to sway, and I put a hand on the counter to steady myself. It was like looking at an uncanny valley version of me, and my psyche was trying hard to reject what I was seeing.

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