Page 101 of Stirring Up Love
She hesitated, and he had his answer. “I still don’t know if I can.”
“Because I’m a liability.” She shot her eyes to his. “You were considering the deal when it was just us. But here, with everyone around ...” He gestured toward the door, where the pulsing thump of party music had started back up. “Were you just waiting for dinner to end to inform me my services are no longer required?”
Her eyes had gone cold. Golden resin hardened to amber. “I am not okay with your tone.”
“My tone?” He pressed his lips together. “You deny knowing me, let alone all that’s happened between us, and you’re worried about mytone?” The nerve he’d always admired had now turned against him.
She balled her fists. “I was lying through my teeth, trying to save face!”
“Because it would be so terrible to admit you care about a loser like me.”
“You’ve got it all backward. It’s me people doubt. I’m the one who no one wants around.” She gripped the steel table behind her, knuckles pale. “One day in Honey and Hickory, and already my cooks think you’re the best thing to happen to the restaurant. Everyone out there keeps reminding me how I never could’ve pulled this off without you.”
“They’re wrong,” he said. No matter what, he wasn’t going to lie to her. “You’ve got nothing to prove.” But he couldn’t wait around until she figured that out.
He was done putting himself out there and holding his breath, waiting to be chosen, or not. “If you can’t admit you might want me around because it might tarnish your image, then I’m out. I need someone who’s sure about me. Not someone who doubts my worth.”
“So you’re walking away from the deal?” Her first concern. Because, of course.
Bowing out would leave her with no options. All or nothing—those were the terms.
“I’m walking away fromyou.” While he still could, before the deal bound them together, for better or for worse. He couldn’t spend a lifetime wondering if he was a means to an end. Couldn’t make her a priority when he was her fallback.
As he pressed a shaky palm to the door, Simone said, “I wish what I’d told my grandpa was true. I wish you’d always been no one to me.”
And honestly? Same.
CHAPTER 36
SIMONE
A very much not-heartbroken Simone cracked open the barn door the next day, her breath frosty, and stepped into the hay-scented warmth. Willow poked her head out of the stall and whinnied.
“Hey, girl.” She found herself smiling at her horse’s eager greeting.See, you’re not heartbroken after all.Heartbroken people did not smile.
Heartbroken people might toss and turn all night, torn to pieces by losing someone they’d gotten slightly—or excessively, as it turned out—attached to. Heartbroken people might hug their pillow to their chest and cry because the man they sort of liked—very much liked—accused them of being a selfish, heartless jerk. And heartbroken people might feel like fools for falling in love with a man who could walk away without a second’s hesitation.
But heartbroken people didn’t get on with their lives the next day. They stayed in bed in holey pajamas and devoured copious amounts of ice cream, washed down with salty tears. They binge-watched sitcoms while sitting amid piles of unfolded laundry and take-out containers.
She, on the other hand, had risen early (a full ten minutes before noon), downed a homemade granola-and-goat’s-milk parfait (managing to only reminisce a teensy bit about baby goats and Finn), and washeddown her sensible breakfast with black coffee, not tears (those were all dried up), and now she was here.
Vertical, dressed, dry eyed, and fueled by a nutrient-dense breakfast. Take that, heartache.
Simone reached into her pocket and pulled out an apple she’d brought from home. Willow nudged her whiskery muzzle into her neck in a horsey thank-you, rocking her back onto her heels, and she chuckled. See? Not heartbroken.
After all, wasn’t getting rid of Finn her deepest desire?
No, not anymore. She’d planned to screw him out of the deal. But in the end, he’d been the one who’d twisted the dagger. Ironic, in the cruelest way.
Somewhere between California and Illinois, her deepest desire had become her greatest fear. Losing Finn.
She swept a wrist under her dripping nose—she wasn’t crying again; freezing temps always made her nose run, nothing new—and wrapped her arms around Willow’s neck. Her watery eyes amounted to a reaction to all the pollen in the hay, was all. A reaction some people—misguided people—might blame on heartbreak.
Face pressed into her horse’s coarse mane, she groaned. “This isn’t what it looks like, okay?” Willow whickered but didn’t pull away. More proof, not that she needed it, that animals were better companions than people. “Loving Finn would be ridiculous.He’sridiculous.”
Willow snorted, like she didn’t care either way, which made Simone feel like maybe she hadn’t made her point well enough. She needed her horse on her side in this.
“Trust me, he’s the worst. For one thing, he’s got his head in the clouds, always searching for the beauty around him instead of being concerned with practical things.”
