Page 157 of While You Were Trending

This house, this community of women—and Heath—this has been my journey. I belong here. I fit here.

But I’m starting to want something more too.

Something I’ve never trusted myself with.

Something I still can’t have because what I want is also leaving.

I glance sharply at Mabel.

Can’t help it.

“If you want,” she murmurs like she’s reading my mind.

Like she knows I’m asking if Declan will get a spot on the wall when he leaves.

I shake my head. “It’s not the same.”

She doesn’t answer, lets the lingering question ofisn’t it?sit between us.

We take in women who’ve gone viral and couldn’t handle the attention, giving them a safe place to escape and cope and work out their problems.

And isn’t that what Declan and I have done?

We’ve worked out our problems.

We’ve created new problems, but the old problem—we’ve worked through that.

Hopefully given him some peace there.

While he’s gone viral for saving our barn, ironically enough.

Dammit.

“Or maybe it is,” I whisper.

“Maybe,” she agrees.

That’s a problem for later.

Along with the mystery of who’s leaving money, the lingering fears that something will go wrong in the fermentation process with the wine and completely wreck us, that something big will break and we won’t be able to afford it, that the bank will question why Mabel’s regularly bringing in random cash deposits between a few hundred and a couple thousand dollars, and the way my stomach rolls over when I think of Declan’s last day here.

We haven’ttalk-talked about how he’s leaving.

About how this thing we’re doing is a bad idea for both of us.

We just fall into bed and pretend everything’s fine.

“We’ll at least put Flow on the wall,” Mabel murmurs.

I smile at that. Everything else can wait.

But deciding to honor Flow—“It’s a deal.”

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HOW TO TEST YOUR BOYFRIEND

Declan