“The cute redhead’s off-limits too,” he said and turned away before Adam could ask any more questions.
But it didn’t stop him. It never did.
No mere human was fast enough to evade Adam Galvin’s mouth.
“Aww, man, did you fuck her too? You always get all the best ass.”
“Remember that,” Spencer called over his shoulder.
His lightened mood lasted until he saw Kelly at the checkout counter, her head down as she counted bills. Her flirty smile long gone, she looked up and saw him. And her desolate expression tore him in half.
He’d done that to her. Taken away the joy in her eyes, robbed her of her carefree laughter. Even if he hadn’t meant to, the damage had been done.
His gut tightened. Every part of him told him to go to her, to explain his behavior the night before. To at least try. He wasn’t a quitter—not at anything. And he wasn’t nearly ready to let her go.
But she turned her back on him. When he hesitated, still unable to leave, she strode away from the counter. The customer she’d been helping called after her, but she didn’t answer. She just kept going.
A minute later, so did he.
* * *
Kelly spent the next week in a haze. She slept, she worked, she talked to Alana on the phone. Whenever her best friend asked if she was okay, she said yes. Because she was. Her heart hadn’t broken completely, just cracked a little in important spots. But she’d get over it. The cliché that time healed all wounds was a cliché for a reason. She’d been hurt often enough that she knew nothing mattered as much when viewed through the barrel of distance.
She just had to live long enough to get there.
In retrospect, she’d been fighting a losing battle from day one. Spencer Galvin didn’t know how to love. He had what appeared to be a stilted relationship—at least in public—with his sister and seemed to hold his perfectly decent little brother at arm’s length.
For all his claims of the two of them being so close, she hadn’t seen it that morning in the store. Spencer hadn’t even said hello to Adam before he’d barked for him to get away from her. She’d believe he might have been jealous, but that wasn’t possible. He had no right to be jealous. If she’d been riding Adam like a show pony right there on the floor of the café, he had no cause to say jack about it.
By his own choice.
As for his parents, she didn’t know. But he didn’t have any friends, at least not that she’d ever heard of or seen stop by the store. His relationships clearly hadn’t been lasting love affairs. So, clearly, the fault was his. It certainly wasn’t because she was incapable of keeping anyone around long enough to get sick of her.
For once, she’d found someone more broken than she was. The only difference was he didn’t know it.
She wanted to tell him. Of course he would probably hang up before she’d gotten very far. But at least she’d have said what she needed to. To make sure she covered the important parts, she intended to start withfuck you.
Which was more than she’d ever said to her freaking parents, who’d sent her yet another cactus-emblazoned shot glass and a stack of postcards for her upcoming birthday.
But she didn’t call. She wouldn’t even give him that satisfaction. No matter what she said, he’d probably see it as her attempting to grovel. Silence was her best weapon. And eventually, if the fates were kind, she simply wouldn’t care anymore.
She got through each day by rote until her birthday. Maybe not well, but she managed. Then she woke with a single-minded goal.
She needed to know who the woman was.
For some reason, she hadn’t asked when Spencer had confessed all. The idea he’d really been with someone else, had made love to the nameless, faceless woman only hours after touchingher, had been all she could focus on. But with the cool objectivity of five days apart, she could see she’d erred.
She got to work on time, as always, and waited for her target to appear. The instant she spotted her immediate supervisor in the hall outside the break room, Kelly pounced.
“Who was the woman Spencer slept with here?” she asked without preamble.
The “situation” from his past may have had no bearing on the present. But the timing of Saturday’s meeting and his subsequent behavior was a little iffy, to say the least. She wasn’t a fan of Agatha Christie for nothing. The answer was right in front of her, she just knew it.
Marcia jolted but she recovered quickly. “You mean besides you?”
“Don’t start. Not today.”
“Why? Because you have your special birthday undies on?”