Page 101 of Somewhere You Belong

“Did you see a ghost?” Parker asks as he strides up to the bar, Grady on his heels. It’s Thursday so the boys are stopping by for lunch, like usual.

“No, just lost in thought.” I turn around, grab the burgers from under the warming lamps, and set them in front of the guys, placing a stack of napkins and a bottle of ketchup on the bar in front of them. “What do you want to drink?”

“The usual,” they say in unison before taking bites of their burgers.

I fill up two glasses with Coke and ice, and set them down next to their plates. “There you go.”

“Fuck, I needed this today.” Grady wipes ketchup from the corner of his mouth. “Mrs. Hansen’s car is giving me trouble, and I haven’t figured out what the hell the problem is yet. It’s been three hours.”

“Well, it’s a dinosaur, so that’s probably why,” Parker mumbles around the bite he just took.

“Be careful about calling cars dinosaurs,” I say, thinking back to when Willow called my Mustang old.

Fuck. I can’t go five minutes without thinking about her.

“I agree.” Grady takes a sip of his Coke. “I wish cars were still made that way. All this new technology is a pain in my ass. Did you know I have to take an entire fender off some cars now to change a fucking battery?”

“That’s ridiculous,” I grumble, only slightly interested in the conversation because the longer I stand here at the bar, the more themental image of Willow lying on the wooden surface the other night steals my attention.

Fuck, she looked good splayed out on my bar.

Tasted fucking amazing too.

“No, what’s ridiculous is that Dallas has been moping around town for the past two days ever since Willow left, and he’s pretending that no one has noticed,” Parker declares, pulling my attention back to him.

Irritation taps against my temples. “I’m not moping.”

“The fuck you aren’t,” Grady counters. “You look like someone took your favorite toy away.”

Well? He’s not wrong.

“Willow isn’t a toy, asshole.” And that’s the truth. Of course, I’ve enjoyed playing with her in the bedroom, but what’s going on between us is far more than just casual, regardless of what she thinks and what I convinced myself I was capable of.

“So it’s for real then?” Parker questions.

I throw my hands out to the sides. “I don’t have a fucking answer for you, okay? You know as much as I do. She needed to leave the house for Penn to finish the floors, which he’s doing today, so she decided to go back to D.C. to check on her business.”

Parker pops a fry into his mouth. “And what is it that she does?”

“She owns an advertising firm. A fucking successful one.”

Yeah, I might have Googled her last night when I couldn’t stop thinking about her and was wondering what she was up to.

Marshall Advertising earned $565 million dollars last year in revenue, which is more money than most will ever see in their lifetime.

As soon as I saw that number, my stomach dropped.

No wonder Willow is in a rush to go back to her life.

And how the fuck was I thinking I had anything to offer her if she decided to stay in Carrington Cove.

My restaurant does well, but notthatwell.

I live in an apartment above my restaurant that is fine for a single guy like me, but not somewhere I would want to start a life with someone.

And as far as money goes, the chunk that I do have was enough for a down payment on the Bayshore house, the house that Willow could sell to me if she leaves, and that’s it.

But that means she’d be gone too.

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