Page 25 of Healing Hearts
“I gotta get out of here,” he says, but he grabs the back of my neck and plants a kiss on my forehead. “I’m sorry, okay. I’m so fucking sorry.”
Then he’s gone, and I’m left standing in the room, feeling branded, as though he’s written his name everywhere he touched, impossible for anyone else to find a corner that’s not been marked by him.
Chapter Eleven
Trent
Grady’s house is a mess, which I’d like to say is because of the ongoing renovations, but it was a rundown piece of shit house when he bought it. But at least he can get a mortgage, have someone loan him the money to do what he wants.
“Should have just dozed the place,” I say, standing in the kitchen and surveying the missing walls. They’ve taken everything back to the studs. The place is an empty shell.
“Maggie has a vision,” Grady says. “I’m just along for the ride.”
“The Sullivan women are a force to be reckoned with,” Kelvin, Grady’s best friend, says, cracking a beer and passing one out of his cooler to me and one to Grady. Joanna, Emily, and Maggie, like Kelvin, have lived and worked in this town their whole lives.
All week I’ve been trying to pretend things are normal between me and Em, even though nothing feels normal, and we haven’t been around each other in person yet to get rid of this lingering unease. Seeing each other will get us over this hump, but every time I’ve tried to stop in, she hasn’t been home or has been too busy to meet up.
Which would feel convenient if I wasn’t able to put it in perspective. There are lots of weeks when one or both of us is too busy to see the other. Doesn’t mean anything.
“My friend, Michael, has been out with Emily three times now, I think,” Kelvin says, squinting as though trying to remember. “Maybe four?”
“Since last week?” I say, unable to temper my outburst.
“Yeah,” Kelvin says with a grin. “Must be going well, right? I had a feeling when I set them up.”
That backless short black dress she’d worn to the dance club had pissed me off in the moment, and I hadn’t been sure why. But later, I realized it was new. I’d never seen it before. The idea of her purchasing it with the intention of showing off her assets to this Michael guy had sparked something I did not want to examine—then or now.
I wonder if she moans for him when he kisses her like she did for me, if she arches into it, eager for more contact.
Christ. I am so fucked.
“You seen her this week?” Grady asks me before taking a sip of his beer.
“Not this week,” I admit.
“If she gets serious with him, you’ll be lucky to see her at all,” Grady says. “Male-female friendships are hard to keep as close once you’ve got a significant other. Or at least that’s what I’ve seen.”
That was true for me and Maggie. It hasn’t bothered me because Maggie’s friendship had been drifting for years before she reconnected with Grady. Then Lila and Emily entered the picture, and I actually really loved having strong female friendships again. We could hang out, flirt, give each other advice. Uncomplicated. Or so I thought.
Then I fucked things up with Lila, and now I’m in the process of fucking things up with Emily.
I really need to stop leaping before I look.
“Amir might get a stepdad after all,” Kelvin says, clinking his bottle with Grady’s as though doing a “cheers,” but when he tries to clink mine, I pull away to take a drink.
“Getting a bit ahead of yourself,” I say, but a ball of anxiety is forming in my gut. There’s no way I’ve spent the last year protecting and nurturing my relationship with Emily and Amir only to have it yanked out from underneath me.
“She’s been on three or four dates with this guy,” Grady says. “When was the last time she even went on a second date? According to Maggie, it’s never happened. No guy has made it to a second date since she started dating again in October.”
That is one hundred percent accurate, and I hate that he knows that, that he’s rubbing it in my face without realizing he’s rubbing it in my face.
“Emily and I are tight,” I say. “She’s not going to drop me for some guy she’s been on a few dates with.”
“Maybe not right now,” Kelvin says, “but eventually, probably. Your partner becomes that go-to person in a crisis or when you need support. I get that you two have become close, but I think this is what she wants isn’t it? A relationship.”
It’s not what she wants. It’s what she’ll settle for because she can’t get what she wants. And I feel an old fire light in my belly, one I’ve tried so hard not to spark in the seven years I’ve been out of jail.
It’s the kind of fire that burns shit down, where I become so laser focused on achieving something that nothing and no one can talk me out of it.
