Ashley couldn’t face this. Sitting here drinking, pretending the elephant wasn’t really in the corner.
We had coffee this morning. And then we pretended the elephant wasn’t sitting amongst the booths in the coffee shops.
“She was real,” I whispered. “And she’s looking down, smiling. I’m sure.”
Rosie blinked away her tears. “I hope she’s not looking down too often, or she might get more than she bargained for.” She gave me a jaunty wink. That was it. “Blink and you miss it” kind of moment.
Rosie losing it. Giving in to the weakness of loss that brought even the strongest to their knees. She was stronger than all of the men she grew up with combined. She carried the same demons they did, but she did it with heels on and a mischievous smile. She was the glue that kept that place together. Sometimes I reasoned that was why she embodied a different persona on the outside every day. Like maybe if she didn’t resemble the same person any given day, the demons wouldn’t find her.
They found everyone.
That was the problem.
I gave her a grin that was just as fake as hers. “Tell me about the latest, then?”
She shifted in her seat. “Well, he’s a model. Editorial, not catalogue, obviously.” She flipped her hair and sipped her drink, glancing around the half-full bar. “And he does the most amazing thing with his—”
She abruptly cut herself off, eyes focusing on something at the bar and turning hard.
I followed her gaze.
Not something.
Someone.
That someone being Luke, the deputy sheriff of our fair town, the enemy of the Sons of Templar… oh, pretty much since high school. Well, he was Cade’s enemy in high school. Then when he got the badge he made it his mission to bring down the club.
At any cost.
Rosie’s heart might just be that price.
He’d had it in his large hands ever since… well, ever since he began to hate her family, her brother and everything her family stood for.
And he was completely blind to that. They say love is blind. Not true. It was hate that made the person the blindest to everything.
His large hand was currently on the small of some blonde’s back. A blonde wearing a very short rip-off Herve Ledger dress and knockoff Jimmy Choo’s. She was leaning into him in a way that said she so wasn’t his sister.
That and we’d known him since high school. He didn’t have a sister.
“And—” Rosie gulped down her drink in one swift swallow—“let’s just say his tongue should get awards from women everywhere.” She gave me a sneaky smile and then looked to my almost-full glass.
She pointed to it. “You gonna drink that?”
I shook my head.
She snatched it and drained that too.
“Zee,” I said softly.
“We’re not speaking of it,” she snapped firmly.
“It’s been a decade of not speaking of it. Maybe talking—”
She abruptly pushed back her chair, the motion so rough that it tumbled to the ground, the sound drawing the attention from the sandy-haired, muscled lawman at the bar and his bottle-blonde date.
She glared down at the chair as if it had done her a personal affront, then bent at the hips to snatch it off the floor.
Her dress, that was technically a tee, rode up with the motion, exposing the curve of her butt that was accentuated by some truly kickass suede Prada booties.
My Prada booties. The universe was looking out for us when it gave us taste in shoes we couldn’t afford but the same size feet.
Luke’s eyes, which had been drawn by the noise, stayed for the view.
I didn’t miss the hunger in them before Rosie straightened. He lingered just a hair too long before moving his attention back to his scowling date.
Rosie hadn’t noticed, too busy trying to pick up the broken pieces of her heart along with the chair.
“I say we hit a club. Dance. Make bad decisions. Wake up with those same bad decisions and then exchange notes over a greasy breakfast,” she suggested, forgetting for a moment what tomorrow was and the fact that we didn’t do anything on those mornings. Or maybe she wasn’t forgetting. There was only so much turmoil the brain could handle at one time; it was a defense mechanism to block out the rest.
I knew what she was doing. Saw the slight shake to her hand as she put it on her hip. The tightness of her blood-red painted smile.
The look of someone still intent on running. Even if it meant when she stopped it would all be that much worse.
So, I did the only thing a best friend could do.
I ran too.
I pushed my own chair back, keeping it upright. “What are we known for, if not our excellent taste in clothes and our even better taste in bad decisions?”
We walked out without a second look.
Well, Rosie did.