Page 90 of Protect My Heart
‘It’s fine. We were almost done anyway.’
‘I’ll call you tonight!’ she says as she hurries back to the guy.
Seeing her with that guy makes me wonder how long it’ll be before I date again, or if I ever will. I wonder how long it’ll be before Jason finds someone. I’m surprised he hasn’t by now. He’s smart, funny, athletic, hot. I wish I’d stayed in touch with him after the wedding. Maybe things would’ve turned out differently. If we’d dated before finding out about the baby, would I have been able to convince Jason to move to Boston with me?
There I go again, fantasizing about what will never be. Jason and I aren’t a couple. We can’t be. I just need to be okay with that.
Chapter 19
Jason
‘Hey,’ Nick says, sitting beside me at the bar. ‘Care if I join you?’
We’re at Sawyer’s brewery. I came here hoping it would get my mind off Mia, but so far, it’s not working.
‘What are you doing here? I thought you were still on your honeymoon.’
After the wedding, Nick and Lyndsay drove down to Chicago and stayed at a resort hotel with a spa.
‘We got home this afternoon. And don’t call it a honeymoon, especially around Lyndsay. I promised her I’d take her on a real honeymoon later this year.’
‘Where does she want to go?’
‘Somewhere in the Caribbean. I would’ve taken her now, but she didn’t want to leave the orchard when we’ve got so much work to do. So how was your game? It was the last one, right?’
‘Yeah, we lost.’
‘Hey,’ Sawyer says to Nick. ‘What are you drinking?’
‘The stout.’
‘How was Chicago?’ Sawyer asks as he gets the beer.
‘Good. Nash, Jake, and Uncle Mitch met us for dinner last night.’
Sawyer brings Nick the beer. ‘Did you tell them the good news?’
‘About Jason getting married and having a kid?’ Nick glances at me. ‘Nah, I figured he should tell them himself.’
‘Would you stop it with the marriage stuff?’ I say, keeping my voice down so the people around us don’t hear. As far as the town knows, I’m still engaged. People have been asking me about it all week, wanting to know who Mia is and where she’s from and why they never saw her before now. I told them Mia and I have been on-and-off dating since last year and that just recently it got serious, but people are still spreading rumors about us that aren’t true.
‘You never know.’ Nick drinks his beer. ‘Maybe the marriage will actually happen.’
‘Yeah, I don’t think so. Who told you about it?’
‘I did,’ Sawyer says.
‘I could barely understand him when he called,’ Nick says. ‘He couldn’t stop laughing.’
‘You think this is funny?’ I say to Sawyer.
‘Dude, if you saw your face at breakfast that day when Mom and Dad showed up, you’d be laughing too.’ He glances behind me. ‘I have to go check on a table.’ He takes off.
‘Sawyer said Mia went back to Madison,’ Nick says.
‘Yeah, yesterday morning. She said she had things to do before her parents got there.’
‘Was that really the reason, or was it something else?’
