Brynn laughed, but tears sprang to her eyes as she did.
“Oh, sweetheart. It’s okay. The dead zone only lasts about an hour, until we’re out of Coconino County. Relax for a little bit, and then you can call your guy.”
Brynn nodded and took in a slow breath. Then out. She repeated the calming exercise, and it seemed to be working. She needed the rest of the hour to go by as quickly as possible. Then she’d call Jamie. She’d tell him they were both idiots, and that would be that.
“Thank you,” she told the woman. “I think I’m going to close my eyes for a few minutes.”
She leaned her head against the window and clutched the plastic-bagged bouquet like a teddy bear.
Just a few minutes was all she needed to collect her thoughts. Her eyes fell shut, and she didn’t bother to set an alarm on her phone. She was too excited to talk to Jamie. Her body would know to wake her when the cell service returned.
Only it wasn’t her body that woke her. It was the pothole on the 101. In L.A.
Brynn had cell service all right, and while she cursed herself for sleeping through her adrenaline rush to call Jamie, the one text notification on her phone deflated her completely.
Spencer: Assuming you aren’t making it tonight, but if you do, we’ll be in the Tower Bar from eight until we close the place down. Hope I don’t seem too eager. Just looking forward to seeing you again.
She didn’t know what she expected when she looked at her phone, not until she saw what wasn’t there. She had an excuse for not contacting him—exhaustion plus the hypnotic lull of a moving vehicle. Brynn should have known better. But how could he not have checked in? Why didn’t he have the same sort of revelation? She wasn’t sure what she expected, but for her to hear nothing the whole day after he shipped her off and out of his sight… Maybe this was Jamie’s final push, his way of telling her no matter what happens in L.A., he can’t handle what happened in Amarillo.
One final stare at her screen solidified her plan. She had nowhere to stay but knew the name of one hotel. As luck would have it, the Sunset Tower Hotel—the one Spencer had invited her to—was less than ten miles from Center Studios, the location for tomorrow’s beer fest. If she needed Jamie for a ride home, he wouldn’t be too far away. Though she couldn’t imagine another few days in the car with him now. She also couldn’t afford to get home any other way. How had one unintentional nap completely changed her perspective?
It wasn’t the nap, and she knew it. Something had made her believe—no, expect—that Jamie would come after her, that he would realize how ridiculous he was being asking her to make a choice she knew in her heart was already made. But Jamie wasn’t the one looking forward to seeing her tonight, and that realization threatened to knock her on her tired and virtually numb ass.
A girl of her word, Brynn kept her promise and texted Jamie:
Made it here safely. Have fun tomorrow. Let’s talk about travel-home arrangements when you get to town.
She waited. And hoped. And waited some more. Come on, Jamie, she thought. Reply. Make contact. If they could just connect, somehow bridge the distance of this canyon growing between them, they could figure out the rest.
Brynn watched the other passengers exit the bus. Braid lady stood and hoisted a bag over her shoulder, then looked down to where Brynn still sat in her chair, staring at her phone.
“Maybe he’s in a dead zone,” the woman said and gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze.
Brynn tried to smile. She wanted to play along, but she was so tired of pretending.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “But thank you anyway.”
The woman’s smile, however, didn’t falter, and the sight of her as she looked back at Brynn one last time before exiting the bus gave her a final glimmer of hope.
One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi.
She counted to a hundred and would have kept going if the driver didn’t insist she get off the bus.
Nothing.
How, after everything she’d said, could he push her over the edge? Did Jamie want her to choose Spencer just to prove himself right? Because nothing had changed, not for Brynn, at least. She’d made her choice.
Even if Jamie didn’t chase her down, if he let fear win, Brynn was done lying to herself and to everyone else about how she felt. She owed someone the truth, and right now there was only one person here who would listen.
She tapped on her most recent text and typed a quick reply:
Hey, Spencer. I’ll see you at eight.
Chapter Twenty-Six