He wasn’t the guy who’d fit Everleigh’s life.
As they got to the end of the cheering line and made their way across the parking lot to the cars, he pulled her back a step and said, “Larissa’s being held without bail and I’ve...got somewhere I need to be...” It wasn’t a lie. He needed to be somewhere that she wasn’t. “Why don’t you ride with your folks and I’ll get your stuff dropped off at your place?”
He had to cut it off at the quick. Make the break clean. No waiting around for her to arrive at some point. No thinking about what he’d say. What she would. No hanging around his condo with her stuff upstairs. No more temptation.
Or giving in to it, either.
The startled, almost lost look on her face cut into him. He bore the pain stoically. It would pass. It always did. “Uh...sure,” she said, glancing ahead at her parents, arm in arm, and Gram, head high, walking a step or two ahead of them.
She looked hurt. Exactly what he’d been trying to avoid.
“Good, then,” he said, grabbing his keys out of his pocket, his breath steamy in the cold air. “Would you mind telling them goodbye for me?” He nodded toward her family.
“Sure,” she said, a look of pure confusion coming over her face as she stopped walking.
He couldn’t stop. Had to keep moving.
“I’m glad everything worked out, Everleigh. You deserve all good things. It was nice working for you. Good luck!” he said and turned his back on her.
It was nice working for you?
Just be done.
It was nice working for you? They’d had sex, for God’s sake. Spent the entire night pleasuring one another. Intimately.
One and done.
The one had been the most incredible night of his life.
And whatever had been between them was done.
* * *
Everleigh sat in the back with Gram on the way across town. Her parents wanted her to stay with them. Gram wanted her. She wanted to go home.
But there was no place attached to that word for her. Except, crazily, her room on the second floor of Clarke’s condo.
His room, that she’d stayed in for a few nights, not hers.
She was going with them to Gram’s to see her settled, maybe have a bite to eat, and then her dad was going to take her back to her place. She’d had a text from the chief of police herself, telling her that her home was no longer a crime scene, and Larissa was being held without bail, which she already knew.
She was safe.
And ready to cry eighteen years of sadness all over the back of her father’s car.
It was over. She was finally free.
Two days ago, she’d have thought her safety, and Gram home, would have been all she needed to have her joy back.
So why wasn’t her heart smiling?
She was out of prison. Gram was home, too. She was safe. They were both free. Fritz was no longer in her life and without the ugliness of a divorce. She’d rather have him alive, wouldn’t ever have wished him dead, but being apart from him forever was good.
Really, really good.
Another day and a half and she’d have enough money to make her dreams come true.
And yet she couldn’t think of a dream that money could buy. The salon, yeah, that was going to happen. She’d already told her parents and grandmother about the plans, and they all wanted to be involved, to help her get the place ready. They’d be okay. She’d always known that. Family love was unconditional. It didn’t mean there wasn’t pain, though. Or need for forgiveness.