The Patriot A Small Town Romance - Jennifer Millikin Page 0,17

leave home so early, and I saw sadness.

Which is how I know that beneath the anger I saw flashing in those brown eyes just now, I glimpsed her sadness.

And I’m the asshole who put it there.

6

Dakota

I’ve done everything I can to calm myself down. Deep breathing, meditating, punching the shit out of a pillow. Turns out, none of those things work when what you really need to do is confront the person who either doesn’t remember you or is pretending not to. And, oh, by the way, he’s also a potential seller of heretofore exclusive property and you’re the hungry buyer.

Wes Hayden.

Wes fucking Hayden.

He looks like a slightly aged version of the man I met one hot summer afternoon five years ago, which is to say he’s unfairly gorgeous. No man should have eyelashes that dark and long, or lips that full and nibble-worthy. And if that shirt he wore rolled up over his forearms gave anything away, it was that he’s still covered in ropy, thick muscles.

Just thinking about him makes my body come alive. My hand brushes over my stomach, the pads of my fingers tracing the path his fingers traveled when they touched me.

There isn’t a single thing I don’t remember about that night. He was quiet, hiding somewhere inside himself, a soldier released from duty for the first time in over ten years. I wiggled my way into his arms and his mind, and he opened up.

We’d had an incredible afternoon, and when the sun went down the night got hotter. Skinny-dipping in the lake was the first of our shenanigans. It was followed by sneaking past the party in our dry clothes and soaking wet hair, and finding a shower in the house. We made use of the shower, the bathroom counter, the floor, the bed.

Wes towered over me, and his hands were huge. He lifted me as if I were made of nothing but feathers, and all I could think was here’s a real man.

I’d never been with anybody in such a primitive way, in a way that was raw and needy, and lacked civility. We took what we wanted from each other.

We never went back to the party. We stayed in the room, and we alternated between talking and sex, a pattern that kept us up until the sun was close to rising. Eventually, exhaustion won and we fell asleep. When I woke up, Wes was gone.

I’d gone to the party with two friends, one of whom lived on the other side of the lake, so I walked back to her house in flip-flops and my borrowed sorority shirt. I was too embarrassed to admit to her that I cared about Wes ghosting me, so I told her it was something we’d agreed on before we’d hooked up. “No strings attached,” I’d said. For what it’s worth, I don’t think she believed me. I may have been a wild child, but there was something about sex that was sacred to me.

But apparently not to Wes. He doesn’t even remember me.

Rolling over, I give the second pillow on the hotel bed one more good punch, then a second for good measure, and stand up. I can’t lie in here wallowing anymore. I’ve already left a Dakota-sized dent in the mattress.

I run a brush through my hair, swipe under my eyes for mascara that ran during my breathing and punching, and pluck my purse from the chair in the corner. On my way down the stairs, I fish my phone from my pocket and video call Abby.

“Hi, what’s up?” she answers, something long and red sticking out of one side of her mouth.

I squint at the screen. “Is that a red bell pepper?”

She nods, pulling it from her mouth and chewing on the bite. “I’m making a snack plate for the girls.”

Of course she is. Because she’s my sister and she’s perfect. Sometimes Abby has cookies waiting for Taylor and Emerson when they get home, but most of the time it’s a fruit and veggie platter with pretzels thrown in for good measure. Usually there is a homemade dip like tzatziki or chocolate hummus. To my knowledge, this snack plate has been her most pinned image and highest viewed recipe on her website, ranking only slightly above Instant Pot coq au vin.

“How are the girls?” I ask, clearing the last step on the staircase and making a sharp right into the lobby. I don’t really know where I’m going, but I’ve got to go somewhere.