Page 86 of Hearts on the Table
“I am.” I had been up all night thinking about all the ways I'd let her down. When I tried to figure out what I could have done differently, better, I kept coming up empty. “But you didn’t see how skittish she was at the beginning. I had to hold her lightly or risk scaring her off. I’m in love with her, T.”
“I know, Sweetie. That’s why you should probably hold on even tighter.” He sighed, wiping down cups for the day’s service. “There’s no use dwelling on it now. What are you going to do next?”
I glanced down at my phone. Four-fifty-one was late-ish, right? “Call her?”
“You want to run that by me again without sounding like you’re asking permission?”
“I can’t stop thinking about how hurt she looked last night. Like I’d failed her. I don’t know if she even wants to speak to me right now.”
“It’s too late,”she’d said.Fuck, maybe it was too late.
“She might not.” He shrugged. I stared, waiting, but he offered nothing else.
“Then, what do I do? If she needs space—”
“Sammy, you tried holding her lightly. It backfired all over your pretty face. You need a trim, by the way.” He stroked his own bare jaw where my beard had gotten scraggly. “So now you try something different.”
I scowled into my coffee. “You say that like it’s easy. What am I supposed todo, Tiago?”
“Call her,” Jordan sang from behind the counter.
“Call her!” Tiago flung his towel down, drowning out Jordan’s words. “Go to her apartment. Text her. Tell her you love her.”
“Tried that. Still couldn’t get her to stay.”
“Hey, Eeyore!” Tiago snapped his fingers in front of my face. “You had a fight. People fight. They get mad and walk away. Is this girl the one?”
“She’s the one.” I knew it down to a cellular level.
“Then tell her that, again and again. Apologize. Find a way to be better. Hold on tighter, Sammy.”
I swallowed past the lump in my throat. Tiago was right. I’d been too cautious, treating this relationship like it would disappear into thin air the second I made a wrong move. Now, though, there was nothing left to lose.
If I stayed silent, just let her walk out the door, she might never come back. And I’d never recover.
“Just don’t stalk her, or anything.” Jordan’s rumble split through the heavy air in the cafe. Tiago scoffed.
“You stalked me and it worked out fine.”
Jordan placed a kiss on Tiago’s nose before turning to disappear into the back. “You were a special case.”
They worked around me, prepping and stacking, letting me think.
At five-thirty, I tapped Lainey’s contact information. Her Cedar headshot popped up. I’d wanted to replace her picture inmy phone with the photo Jas had snapped of us a few days ago. The one on my porch, me hugging Lainey from behind. Both of us happy. But I hadn’t wanted to risk someone at work seeing it.
I dialed. Waited. She didn’t pick up.
Chapter 32
Lainey
I cringed when Sam’s last message illuminated my phone. He’d sent a picture of his porch. Sun shining, his feet just edging into the bottom of the screen. It physically hurt to look at it.
A lot of things hurt these days.
I’d told Sam I was leaving to protect myself, because I couldn’t go through it all again: losing my partner, my friends, and my job.
A horrible joke, seeing as I lost Sam, nearly all of my friends were related to him, and my job prospects were hanging on by a thread.
