Page 41 of Bad Decisions

Her gaze darts away first, back to him.

“Will, you do realize you’re staring at them. It’s a little awkward when she’s obviously on a date.” Blake’s words register enough that my eyelids shutter closed briefly before opening and dropping to the floor.

She’s on a date. The knowledge sits with the heavy weight of defeat across my shoulders. It never occurred to me that she would have moved on. And it fucking should have. I’m an idiot, and my fist tightens around my beer as I fight the urge to bang my head against a nearby wall. A stupid fucking idiot.

Three gulps of beer do nothing to shift the lump of regret stuck in my throat. Another nudge from Blake, and I train my glare on him. Doesn’t he get that I need a minute here?

He ignores it. “She’s walking toward the bathrooms, alone. If you want to speak to her, now’s your chance.”

Without a word to my friend, I snatch up my crutch and thump across the floor after her. A frosted glass swing door separates the long hallway from the main bar, and about halfway along the hall, a plastic restroom sign points down a set of stairs.

Great!

One hand on the right rail and my left gripping the metal stick, I hop my way down them. Though I try to avoid stairs, I’ve become reasonably adept at navigating them, and it no longer causes me to grimace in pain. Jewel is nowhere to be seen when I reach the bottom, and I lean against the wall to wait.

One minute ticks by, then a second. And as the third slides into the fourth, Jewel appears. There’s no surprise in her expression when she sees me, just a look of resignation, like it was inevitable that I was going to follow her.

“You didn’t mention that you were dating.”

“We’re not. This is just a drink.”

Arguing over semantics is just going to piss me off more. I can’t let it go. “And how many drinks have you been out to with the guy upstairs?”

Jealousy is an emotion I’ve never had to navigate in the past. Yet it flows through my body unheeded by filters and coats my words with a cool, detached aloofness that I normally reserve for business associates.

“This is only the second time,” she admits with tiny embers of defiance in her gaze.

“I guess this is what you meant by needing time.”

She flinches. Her crestfallen expression is the admission I was searching for.

“That’s my bad for assuming you were free. I’m sorry.”

I stiffen my stance, and an arrow of pain shoots down my injured leg, but it’s nowhere near as bad as the one seizing my heart. This is love, and it hurts worse than a hundred knives piercing my skin because she’s moved on with some other lucky bastard.

“Goodbye, Jewel.” I turn and leave, each step heavier than the last.

What else is there left to say? She isn’t interested in me being anything other than her patient. And now not even that.

We’re done. I’ve lost her. And now all that’s left is for me to leave her for good this time.

Chapter twenty-three

Jewel

With my eyes squeezed shut, I hear him leave.

Thump, thump, thump.

Will’s devastation washed away the familiar warmth from his gaze and extinguished the glint in his navy eyes, leaving his face the blank canvas of a stranger’s. A chill ripples in waves from my heart, until my fingertips become numb. This is my fault. I pushed for time, insisted on it. And all time has brought me is a lonely emptiness where my heart once thrived.

My phone buzzes in my hand, and I jump. Hope springs with the wild thought that it’s Will. But Henry’s name is the one at the top of my messages, and he’s wondering where I am. It’s the jolt of reality I need to send me back upstairs to explain to Henry that I’m not free.

Will just walked away with my heart, and I need to find a way to bring it and him back home where they belong.

“You can fix this,” Cara claims, and it’s the encouragement I badly need to hear, even though I’m not convinced.

It’s been a hell of a tumultuous night, and the sour taste that I’ve had in my mouth since speaking to Will won’t go away.