Blitz (Blast Brothers #3) - Sabrina Stark Page 0,102
the sentiment, the profanity, the way she'd said it – it was like they were coming from the mouth of a stranger.
And of course, it wasn't lost on me that sometime within the last hour or two, she'd been hugging on her ex-boyfriend, Bryce Whoever.
Was he the one who got away?
The one she'd been secretly pining after for years?
Was he that guy?
Knowing Mina, it was hard to believe. The guy was a cheater and an asshole. And Mina was, well, the sweetest thing I'd ever known – unless I didn't know her as well as I thought.
And now, she looked ready to cry.
Fuck. I wanted to pull her into my arms and tell her that everything would be alright. But she'd already shoved me away once, and dumped me for good measure.
Maybe I wasn't the one she wanted holding her.
Yeah, it was far-fetched, but, hey stranger things had happened, right?
If the script called for me to beg, she had no idea who she was dealing with. I forced another grin. "Hell, yeah, I'm arrogant. What, like that's a surprise?"
From the look in her eyes, she wanted to slap the grin off my face and kick me in the nuts for good measure. But she didn't.
Instead, she asked in an eerily calm voice, "Do you remember your idea from a week ago?"
By now, I was finding it hard to remember much of anything. "What idea?"
"Of getting another spokesperson to take my place."
"Yeah?"
"You were right. And I was wrong." Her lips formed a pale impression of a smirk. "Sorry."
No. The only person sorry was me, because I'd just learned something that I should've realized earlier. Mina Lipinski wasn't the girl I thought she was.
And me? I'd been playing the dutiful boyfriend long enough.
I told her, "I'm glad you finally wised up."
She blinked, and a single tear slid down her cheek. She wiped it away with the back of her fist, as if the teardrop had personally offended her. "Yeah, no kidding," she said. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got work to do."
And with that, she turned and strode away, leaving me staring after her.
Now, it was my turn to swallow. What the hell had just happened?
Chapter 69
Chase
I didn't see Mina for the rest of the day, but I saw plenty of my brothers and their fiancées. By now, I was pissed and tired, and so confused, I felt like I was losing my mind.
The only upside was that with my brothers on the scene, I could skip the personal appearances and shove it all onto their plates instead.
And boy, did Mason love that.
But I didn't care.
Suddenly, I was finding it hard to care about anything. By the time night fell, and the midway glowed with carnival lights and the faces of happy people, I was almost ready to lose it.
I ditched the festival and drove back to the hotel. And, because I wasn't a complete dick, I sent Mina a text beforehand, telling her to let me know if she needed a ride.
Her reply came in an instant. "I'm good. Thanks."
If so, that made one of us, because the longer this went on, the more I realized that I wasn't good at all. In fact, I was feeling so lost and shitty that I was having a hard time holding it together.
But I did – right up until the moment I walked through the door of our hotel room and discovered that Mina had already moved her stuff.
This shouldn't have been a big deal.
It was easy to guess where she'd gone. Even though we'd been sharing my hotel room, she did have a room of her own.
Pissed or not, I wanted to go down there and knock on her door, and while I was it, beg her tell me what had happened.
But I didn't, because that was me.
Of course, I wasn't the kind of guy to call the front desk either, but that's exactly what I did at ten o'clock that night, only to be told that Mina Lipinski had checked out hours ago.
What the hell?
Buckville was three hours away from Bayside, and she had no vehicle of her own – not up here, anyway. Today was Sunday, which meant that our next destination wasn't another festival, but wherever we called home.
In Mina's case, this was her parents' farmhouse. In mine, this was a condo that I was dreading returning to. Why, I didn't even know.