“They’re my boyfriend’s.”
His eyes flare while he jerks his head to look at me.
Say what you will about Greyson Cartwright, the man is not always the smoothest.
Grumpy? Sometimes. Annoying? Also sometimes. Adorably charming when he wants to be?
Unfortunately.
But if he were cast in a Razzle Dazzle film, he’d be the awkward librarian who can’t quite hide all of his feelings. And while I love Jonas Rutherford, the channel’s biggest star, and while it absolutely pains me to admit this, I’d watch Grey in that role in a heartbeat.
Even after all the heartburn he’s given me these past few weeks.
“You have a boyfriend,” he repeats.
“Long-distance. It’s brand new. Military. He’s stationed in Korea right now. We have phone sex every night before I go to bed.”
“That’s your toothbrush,” he stutters.
I suck in a breath.
He goes red as all the hearts that have started going up around town before Valentine’s Day.
“Are you sure?” I ask.
He snags the cleats, hands me Jitter’s leash, and squats quickly, bending over his feet while he figures out how to strap on the spikes.
“I didn’t realize you’d taken the bedroom that shares a wall with mine,” I say. “Very good to know.”
“You don’t have another boyfriend.”
Another? “Are you sure?”
“You don’t date.”
“Maybe I found my soulmate and changed my mind.”
“Yesterday?” He’s still staring at the ground, working a lot harder than he should have to in order to get the spikes on.
And when he straightens, he’s managed to go straight-faced again, though he’s still pink in the cheeks.
I’ll be kind and assume it’s the cold getting to him.
But more, I can’t answer his question.
I don’t want to play games.
I don’t want to lie.
All I want to do is take a hike with him.
“Which way?” he asks, pointing at where the trail forks just ahead.
And I pick a direction.
I’m heading up my favorite path with a man that I should not be attracted to and my dog who loves him.
Gossip help me if he wants to be alone here because he knows I called his grandmother.
23
Grey
Sabrina shoves hiking poles at me and then nudges Jitter toward the fork on the left without waiting to see if I’ll keep up. I step cautiously, but the tools she gave me for my boots have good traction.
“Wow. Makes a big difference. Thank you,” I say to her.
“Welcome to physics.”
“I know physics.”
She slides me a look. “Do you know it as well as you know, say, how to run a restaurant?”
That wasn’t sly at all. “I know physics better.”
“Believable.”
“But I’m a fast learner.”
“Also believable. Speaking of learning, I heard Zen say your villain era doesn’t really suit you.”
Zing. She lines up, takes her shot, and she scores.
“Midlife crisis.”
“You’re thirty-three.”
“You’ve done your homework.”
“You’d expect nothing less.”
She’s not wrong.
And even knowing it’s dangerous, I like knowing that she’s thinking about me as much as I’m thinking about her.
Also?
Not a single soul has asked me if I’m okay after my dizzy spell the other day. Nor has anyone other than Sabrina asked what Chandler did to me or how I feel about my former research lab partner actually being in his villain era.
They’ve only hinted that they suspect Sabrina and I are hooking up.
She’s not posting secret videos of my confessions all over the internet.
Not like someone posted a video of the House of Curry food fight my first week here.
Sabrina seems to take her gossip seriously. She’s up-front that she knows everything and will disclose it when she thinks it’s necessary. I’ve seen it in action. And not just with the woman who posted the wedding video, though that was definitely the most direct.
We hike in silence for a few minutes save for the sound of Jitter’s happy panting and the crunch of our shoes and poles on the trail. It’s fascinating to me that the path is covered in packed snow, like this trail is hiked often, even in the winter, though we seem to be the only people here now. The sky’s a clear blue peeking through the pine trees, and there’s something unexpectedly peaceful and almost enjoyable about being out here.
My fingers are cold. My toes are cold.
But not unbearably so.
“Is what your lab partner did to you the only reason you’re in your villain era now?” Sabrina asks.
And honestly?
I like that about her.
No hiding. No games. No small talk. She’s straight to the point.
I shake my head. “Just the final straw.”
“And the rest of the straws?”
“A lifetime of being manipulated.”
She slides a look my way. Does she know it was my family? Does she suspect it?
Or am I reading more into that look than is actually there because I want to tell her?
Some older lady came in yesterday and was grilling Zen about their personal history and our relationship, which sent Zen into a retreat.
I know Sabrina noticed.
Not because she said anything.
But because she did something. She popped out from the kitchen, where she still insists she belongs at every opportunity, and asked the woman something about an old friend, which distracted the lady from grilling Zen and put her instead on a tangent about a cheating husband.
“I didn’t put together that manipulation was the right word for it until Zen used it for the first time after they moved in with me,” I add.
“Your ex?” she asks.
“Yes, but she wasn’t the first.”
I get another side glance.
“My parents and siblings,” I clarify.
“You’re younger than the rest.”
She has done all of her homework. “The inconvenient one who was blamed for arriving ten years later than the previous youngest child, stealing the baby spot in the family, and needing things they’d all grown out of. Yes.”
Her nose wrinkles. “You didn’t have nannies?”
“When my mother could see the writing on the wall about the direction the family trust fund was headed? The nannies were only for when other people were watching.”
She glances at me again, and I wish I had the power to read faces the way she seems to.
It matters to me not just that I’m honest with her, but that she knows I’m being honest.
That she knows I’m putting my secrets on the line and trusting her with them.
That she knows I’m not tearing apart her café because I enjoy punishing her.
It’s Chandler. I need a win over an asshole.
“Jitter, slow down,” she says.
He grins back at us with his larger-than-life doggie grin, then forges ahead, not at all bothered by slippery or uneven spots on the snow-packed path.
Or willing to take directions on how fast or where to go.
“My mom never wanted kids,” she says quietly after we’ve taken two more turns on the path between towering pine trees. “She didn’t want to get married. Her dream was to be free as the wind to go wherever she wanted in the world with nothing tying her down. Work just enough to make ends meet and fund her travels. But when she found out she was pregnant after a short-term fling with a guy who was passing through, she decided to keep me. And she’s never once made me feel like I kept her from the life she would’ve had otherwise even though she hasn’t traveled much since I was born.”
“I always wondered what it would’ve been like to know I was wanted.”
“And not grow up to want to be Super Vengeance Man? I’m sorry, but clearly, your suffering was necessary for the good of the world.” She grins at me, and I nearly go lightheaded.
In the good way.
She hasn’t sparkled at me since Hawaii, and Sabrina Sullivan with teasing mischief twinkling in her bright green eyes takes my breath away.
My steps slow.
Her smile falters. “I didn’t mean that.”
“I know.”
“Everyone should feel wanted.”
“I have people in my life who fulfill my emotional needs.”
“Drink your water.”
“I’m fine.”
“If you pass out on the trail, I’m going back to my car without you and leaving you to the mountain lions.”