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“You don’t want me for me. You want to show the world that you bagged the teacher? That you’re hot enough, mature enough, to score with the older woman who is off-limits to you. I’m so fucking stupid.” The curse slips out even though I’ve been trained my entire life not to speak like that. “This was all about the chase to you, and I’m the moron who fell for it.”
Liam’s spine goes ramrod straight as fury turns his eyes from gray to black. “If you truly think that, then you haven’t learned a goddamn thing about me.”
Tears slide down my cheeks, whether for this fight or how I can’t seem to mentally hold myself together, I’m not sure. My stomach feels like it might upend itself, and I clutch it as if it’ll ground me.
“Or maybe I knew you too well all along, which is why I fled town to get away from you. You’re not good for me. From the start, this was toxic, and I can’t …”
Liam looks torn between distress and rage, and there are so many charged feelings sparking between us that I’m surprised we haven’t caused some power outage.
Before I can say another thing to damage us beyond repair, I turn and stride away on shaky legs. He drove me, but my condo is close enough that I can still make it there before I break down. Headlights and voices strike my periphery but I barely notice them, the jovial mood of a weekend night in Hope Crest unable to penetrate the panic threatening to shut me down.
As I round the corner of Newton Street, finally away from the majority of the crowd, I realize Liam hasn’t followed me.
Part of me is relieved, while part of me expected my persistent grump to not have let me run off alone. I guess when you offend someone so deeply, they don’t feel like being your knight in shining armor anymore.
The thought I might have lost him by my own doing envelops me, and I keel over and retch into a bush under the shadow of a large tree. My mouth is sour as I straighten, and I know I need to hustle if I’m going to make it home before I descend into the madness tapping at my temples.
Because I may have saved myself, but I might have just ruined the greatest thing I ever had in my life.
23
LIAM
Despair still roils in my gut as I push through the swinging kitchen door of Hope Pizza.
All the lights remain off at this time of morning, and out the big bay window with the restaurant’s signage, Newton Street is quiet. Not like it was less than twelve hours ago when Gabrielle ran off on me.
My heart squeezes like a fist is trying to crush it, and I have to grip the back of a chair to keep upright.
Sleep was nonexistent as I drove myself home in a fog and fell onto the couch, refusing to climb into a bed that smelled like her. The insults and accusations she hurled at me outside the bar weaseled their way under my skin, and still feel like splinters causing pain every five seconds. Her paranoia and intense worrying about what people thought about us broke both our hearts, and I don’t know how to move past this.
I spent months trying to slowly coax her, convince her, and it was to no use. Deep down, she seemingly will always feel this way. When I think about us right now, all I feel is hopeless.
Not going to sleep meant heading out in the moonlight to work in my fields since it was the only thing that could take my mind off my problems. But even that hadn’t worked. So I came here to sit on the stool Nonno used to occupy when he’d watched Nonna bake night after night, but that didn’t work either.
Which led to the cleaning tear I am on now at six a.m. Because apparently, scrubbing the floors with a toothbrush and ripping every cabinet and closet to shreds at Hope Pizza is how I am taking out my aggression these days.
Having already gone through the spice rack in the kitchen and thrown out expired bottles while labeling everything, I’m now rooting around the drink station and tossing old paper goods that have been mangled or stained during service. Damn, I didn’t fall far from my mother’s method of coping.
“Um, what the hell are you doing?”
A disheveled but bright-eyed Evan stands behind me when I turn my neck.
“Cleaning,” I clip out, crouching to reach a fallen stack of lids that have settled behind the countertop.
“Yeah, more like destroying the restaurant. You gonna get this all put away before noon when lunch service starts?” His voice is gruff, like he just woke up.
My brother spends more time here than anywhere else, and I should have known he’d be in the kitchen when I just wanted to be alone. But something about his presence is pissing me off more than usual this morning. Oh, wait, it could be that I got in an enormous fight with my girlfriend, and everything is pissing me off, but Evan has always been a good emotional punching bag.
“This place has gone to total shit since August left.” I harrumph, tossing aside all the unorganized shit on the shelves.
“Why does my own family like that waitress more than me?” Evan snarls, clearly upset by my comment.
Shooting him a glare for referring to her like that, I tell him, “Because she kept her head down and didn’t complain or criticize everyone within these walls. August is a damn hard worker and doesn’t let her ego get in the way of shit.”
“Says the guy who is too stubborn to admit he shouldn’t take over the family business and should stick to what he loves doing on the farm.” My brother lobs back the ultimate insult, and I nearly topple over from the force of it.
“What the fuck did you just say?”
