Page 12 of The One Who Got Away

But when Rosa called after me, I stopped.

“Hey, we didn’t finish your orientation. I still need to get you badged.”

Thank you for the opportunity, but I can’t accept this job, became, “Is it okay if we reschedule?”

Chapter Four

Ashton pressed a hand to my forehead, her green eyes narrowing. She ended the unsolicited evaluation, her tone filled with disappointment. “So, you’re not feverish.”

I rushed a hand through my hair, ignoring the bite of pain when I hit a tangle. I’d driven to her place with every window that still worked all the way down, trying to lower my heart rate and the fire Lincoln’s touch had ignited. It hadn’t done much except turn my dirty blonde strands into a cyclone of knots.

I hadn’t bothered to start unpacking, making a beeline for the fridge where I polished off an entire bottle of sangria. My main course was a bag of Doritos and when Ashton got home from work, I was surrounded by Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup wrappers. I looked a mess, I felt a mess, and now the one person that could make me feel a little better had jokes.

“Of course I’m not feverish,” I snapped, wanting to search her kitchen for something alcoholic. Even cooking sherry would do, anything to dull the helplessness that was consuming me. My plan of action must have been all over my face because she marched over to the recycle bin and lifted the empty wine bottle to the light.

“You’ll learn that shopping isn’t quite my forte, so if you want to get wasted, let me buy you a drink.”

“You want me to go out like this?” I asked incredulously. I’d avoided mirrors and my reflection for the past few hours, in part because I didn’t want to terrify myself on top of everything else. I wasn’t ready to face the woman in the mirror. The woman that promised that the next time I saw Lincoln Carraway, I’d tell him to fuck off, not almost jump his bones in an elevator.

Ashton dropped the bottle back in the bin with a clang. “Who cares? You’ve showered recently, and you’re not on the hunt for a date.”

Well, since I already looked like I belonged slumped on a bar stool, ordering my umpteenth piña colada, I dragged myself to Ashton’s car. I wasn’t even offended when she rolled down the windows and passed me a tin can of Altoids along with her travel stash of body spray.

I knew she was dying to ask me questions, the first one being why I didn’t tell Lincoln to stick the job where the sun didn’t shine, but she let the radio do the talking. The drone of the DJs and commercials was like white noise and after I doused myself in warm vanilla sugar and popped a mint, I leaned back against the headrest and shut my eyes.

The sangria had me all warm and loose, ready to snuggle and catch some Zs. Hell, escaping in some dream sounded pretty good right about now, but my mind wouldn’t rest. Ordering myself not to think about Lincoln just cemented his face to the back of my eyelids. I knew every inch of that man, and five years had only enhanced how delicious he was.

“No dating, no men,” I groaned, scrubbing a hand down my face, trying to cut those thoughts off at the knee. “And no Lincoln Carraway.”

“On that we’re agreed,” Ashton said darkly, her lips a glossy snarl. “I thought he was toxic back then, and clearly he hasn’t lost his touch. You’re day drinking for crissakes.”

I ignored the dig at my sobriety, or the lack thereof, because I was still stuck on the whole ‘he hasn’t lost his touch’ thing. That would have been too much to ask, that time be cruel to the one man who was cruel to me. If nothing else, he was even sexier than I remembered. His hair was longer, just the right length that it turned him into a force to be reckoned with. His eyes were more brilliant, the gray the color of electricity. All those All-American good looks, the sharp jaw, the perfect angled nose, the lips that turned a smile into pure sex, were just heightened with time. And his touch...it was enough to send me back to church because I needed some spiritual help to keep me from doing something truly foolish. Like forgetting the past and focusing on the pulse racing, knees quaking, panties dripping-

“You’re thinking about him right now, aren’t you?”

Even if I wasn’t in some lust-induced haze and the volume on the radio hadn’t dropped to zero, Ashton’s disdain would have snapped me right out of it. It was a whip that sliced through the air and stung when it hit flesh.

I popped open an eye. “Of course not.”

“Liar,” she hissed, whipping her SUV into a parking space.

My questions a few moments ago were for myself (Why are you setting yourself up to be hurt again?) and for Lincoln (Why did it take you five years to get your shit together?). When I looked at my best friend, choking the life out of her steering wheel, her face as red and pinched as a newborn baby moments before the screaming began, I had a question for her.

“Why are you so dialed up about this, Ash?”

I half expected her to snap that she wasn’t dialed up, then to blush even deeper and drop her volume and get to the root of why this was bothering her so much. Instead, she unbuckled her seatbelt and turned her annoyance on me full blast.

“Why aren’t you more dialed up?” she fired back. “One smile from Lincoln Carraway and you forget what he did? You’ve forgotten how he ruined you? How he ruined you so wholly, so completely, that you couldn’t even step a foot back in North Carolina for five years while everything he touched turned to gold and he had a different socialite on his arm every week?”

Anger flared in my chest as I faced her head on. “You think I’m not dialed up? That I haven’t been torn up from the moment he turned around and locked his eyes on mine? That the smile that used to flip my heart upside down didn’t rip my heart right out of my chest?!”

I knew I was shouting, knew that she was just being fiercely loyal, but no one, not even Ashton, knew the number the breakup had done on me.

I was no nun, I didn’t stop having urges. I’d fucked, I’d even tried dating, but anytime it got serious, anytime they got too close, I shut it down. I knew heartbreak and I had no intention of ever letting a man do that to me again.

Yet here you are, ready to let bygones be bygones...

Ashton let go of the steering wheel, but her bitterness still edged her words as she turned off the car. “I’m just looking out for you, Cat. You know that, right?”

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