The Heartbreaker of Echo Pass - Maisey Yates Page 0,122

have to do that,” she said, swinging her legs around and pushing herself out of the truck, ball of white tulle first.

“Maybe not,” he said. “But it seems like the thing to do when somebody has just run out on their wedding.”

“What am I going to do, Laz? I can’t go back to Sugar Cup. Everybody in town is going to know. Everybody in town must already know.”

“I managed to make it through a Friday night without hearing about it.”

“Great. They are protecting me. Because they hoped I was going to come back. That’s what it has to be. But I wasn’t going to come back. I was never going to come back.”

“Why didn’t you just break up with him before the wedding, Jordan. If that’s what you were feeling?”

“Because I was afraid. And I thought that wanting to be part of his family... I thought that wanting to do it was the same as being in love. But it’s not. And beneath all my wanting to do it, I desperately didn’t want to do it. I don’t know if that makes sense.”

“Makes sense to me. I understand.”

“It’s such a mess, Laz. I really made a mess of it.”

She was looking up at him, pleading, and he really couldn’t take it.

“Sleep,” he bit out. “Don’t talk about messes. And don’t think about whether or not you should be cleaning them up. You can’t do anything when you haven’t slept.”

“I should know,” she said. “I’ve spent years not sleeping.”

“Me too. Occupational hazard.”

He led her inside, and ushered her through the house, into his bedroom. He gritted his teeth. Jordan was in his bedroom. And who the hell was he that it made him feel this way? He had spent years having casual sex. The desire was easy. The getting there was easy. The saying goodbye was easy. But the scary thing was that Jordan had said hello one day, in the wee hours of the morning, and he had never even considered saying goodbye. That was the problem. She mattered. And he didn’t really know what to do with someone who mattered quite this much.

Except give her a place to stay.

“I’ll get you a T-shirt.”

He reached into the top drawer and pulled out a gray T-shirt. He almost grabbed a white one, but thought that was a shade too masochistic. Imagining her in nothing but a white T-shirt was enough to destroy him completely. Imagining her in a gray one was only going to render him partially reduced.

“Thanks,” she said.

“I’ve got sweatpants too but they’re not going to fit you.” Laz was over six feet, Jordan was maybe five-two. She was a tiny little thing. Tiny, feral and angry, and that was all the things he liked about her. All the things she was always trying to cover up. To be acceptable to that boyfriend and his damn family.

“I’ll sort it out,” she said.

“I can go down to town and get some of your things tomorrow if you want.”

“Would you do that?”

“Yeah. Help me figure it out.”

“Well, maybe he went on our honeymoon. If he did...”

“You think he’d go on your honeymoon by himself?”

“Oh, not down to San Francisco. But to Hawaii, yes. We were flying out of San Francisco because we got a deal. Those tickets aren’t refundable. I bet he’s getting on a plane.”

“Too bad plane tickets aren’t transferable anymore. That’s one of those made-for-TV romance movies waiting to happen. He could grab one of your bridesmaids.”

Jordan laughed. “I don’t have bridesmaids.”

And he should have known that. Because the fact of the matter was that he would call Jordan his best friend and she would call him hers.

“It hurt my feelings that you weren’t there,” she said. She smiled. “You know, somewhere between here and Medford.”

“When you realized?”

“Yes.” The corners of her mouth turned down. “You didn’t come to find me. So I knew you didn’t know. I knew... Laz, I knew you would have come for me.”

His breath stopped. Right there in his lungs.

“We’ll talk about that later.”

She nodded. “Did you just think I wouldn’t do it? Is that what you thought? Did you know that I was going to walk into the bar?”

He wished he could say yes. But the fact was, for him, that would’ve been optimism. And he didn’t traffic in that level of optimism. He was a realist. But then, maybe he was going to have to forget about that. Because it was not realistic that Jordan had come to the bar in her