“Take the bag of OREOs you keep in the cupboard over the oven instead of the pantry so you don’t see them when you go in there and eat them all instead of real food.”
Of course he knew that about her. He knew everything. “OREOs are real food.”
He chuckled. “I know you think that.” He paused. “I don’t want to hurt you, Liz. I don’t want to lose you either.”
“You won’t. We’ll always be friends.” She barely got those words out her choked-up throat before she hung up on whatever he might have said. Wrung out, she left the phone on the charger on the counter, grabbed the bag of cookies, and headed down the hall to her room.
Texts started dinging on her phone. One after the other as she set the cookies on the bathroom counter, stripped off her clothes, winced at the red marks marring her left shoulder, gulped a significant portion of her beer to ease the wave of anger and fear that washed through her, then popped a cookie in her mouth before she turned on the taps and stepped under the steaming spray.
She let the tears fall again, remembering Clint’s dark and angry eyes and the fear that overtook her when he didn’t let her go. If Ava hadn’t stepped in to help . . . she didn’t want to think about what Clint might have done next.
She tried to focus on Tate and the sweet, hesitant way he tried to repair their relationship. Not that it was broken. She just wanted more. And if she couldn’t have that, she wanted to find what she wanted with him with someone else who loved her like she loved Tate.
He put it out there, kind of tested the water, by telling her he wanted to try. She appreciated that he’d do that for her, but she’d come to terms with him not loving her. That’s why she’d forced herself to start dating and how she ended up with Clint.
He started out a good guy. But tonight it became clear that he wasn’t the right guy for her.
And Tate, she’d rattled him by making him think she didn’t want to be friends anymore.
Any minute, he’d come to his senses and tell her that their friendship meant everything to him and that’s all he wanted.
Her heart ached with the echo of all the other times he’d made that clear to her in so many words.
She stepped out of the shower, dried off, ate another cookie, turned off the light, listened as two more texts came in, closed her bedroom door, and crawled into bed despite not having dinner or it even being close to her bedtime.
She let the quiet punctuated by text dings surround her. She felt the aching loneliness of her home and especially her bed. She wished Tate was here to wrap his arms around her and hold her safe and loved in his arms.
Dreams.
She wished they were real and not the reality she’d lived today.
She closed her eyes and remembered the way Tate had called her his girl. After all the bad, that one thing chased away the nightmare of today and gave her some peace.
Chapter Seven
Tate hefted the last hay bale off the trailer and handed it to Declan to stack in the barn. He wasn’t sure who got the better end of the deal when he stood tall and groaned at the ache in his lower back. He jumped down. The thud of his boots hitting dirt reverberated through his knees to his back, setting off a new round of spasms.
“You’re getting old, man.” Declan smacked him on the shoulder.
“I’m two and a half years younger than you.”
“Then you’re seriously out of shape.”
Tate held up both arms and flexed his biceps. “Who’s out of shape?”
“What did Liz think of those guns?”
Tate dropped his arms. “I’m still trying to pin her down.”
“And do what to her?” The mirth in Declan’s eyes made Tate grin, but the last couple days hadn’t been at all funny.
“Shut up. You know that stuff you asked me?”
Declan raised a brow. “Yeah.”
“I thought about it. Maybe there is something there if her seeing this guy makes me want to punch him every time I see him.”
“You not liking this guy means you want to pin Liz down?”
More hard questions.
“There have been times,” he admitted. “But I always put the brakes on it because it’s Liz. Our friendship meant too much to me to mess it