Page 55 of Tiny's Law

“Has he tried to call you?”

“My phone’s dead,” I say, staring at the home design magazine on their coffee table.

Owen rounds the couch and sits on the coffee table right in front of me. “He’s gotta know you’re not like that, right?”

I shrug. “We haven’t been seeing each other that long. I mean, hell, that’s his aunt. I wouldn’t blame him for believing her over me.”

“You need to talk to him. Explain yourself,” Reggie adds.

I spin towards him. “You think I want to go back there now? After I ran away like a little girl!”

Reggie chuckles at my obvious freakout. “No. And I don’t mean right now. Give it a day or two, then explain to him what happened.”

“Still, I don’t know that he’ll believe me over her.” I shake my head. The thought of explaining that lightning storm of a situation to him makes me want to vomit.

Owen reaches forward and grabs ahold of my hand. “You won't know unless you try, yeah?”

I nod gently and release a breath.

“Why don’t you go take a warm shower? I assume you came here since you don’t wanna go home?”

I nod again, forcing myself to give them both a small smile.

Thank God I bought that self-feeder, so Meatball should be okay for a night without me. He’s probably stretched out on my bed, snoozing away. I go to grab my phone to check on him through the app Tiny set up for me, but I remember my phone is dead.

“Can I borrow a charger? I just want to check on Meatball.”

“Of course, babe. I’ll grab you some clothes to sleep in and a charger while you’re in the shower.”

“Thank you guys for being the best,” I sniffle, pushing up from the couch.

Reggie walks me to the spare room and squeezes my arm one last time before I close myself in.

Stepping into the blissful steamy shower, I try not to picture Tiny’s face when Evie spouted her accusations. All these months, I’ve tried so hard to forget about why I left Phoenix, and in the span of one hour, it’s all been brought back to the surface. It makes me sick to my stomach.

I’m barely out of the shower when a wave of nausea passes over me. I drop to the floor, and my stomach unloads itself into the toilet.

Jesus.

What the hell?

Standing up on shaky legs, I rinse my mouth out under the faucet while simultaneously pulling the cabinet drawers open. Thanking my past self for leaving a toothbrush here, I use it to clean out the sour taste of vomit from my mouth.

Padding out to the bedroom, I see Owen or Reggie has left me a t-shirt and sweatpants along with a charger sitting atop my purse.

After drying off and pulling on the too-big-for-me clothes, I plug my phone in and wait for it to turn on. I turn on the TV and queue up Netflix for some background noise, and when my phone finally turns on, I open my home camera app.

Meatball is exactly where I imagined he would be, spread out at the foot of my bed, sleeping.

In a panic, I chuck my phone across the bed when it lights up with an incoming call from Tiny. Battling with myself about whether to answer it, I grab the phone and ignore the call while powering it back off.

This seems like a problem for later, Kourtney. Right now, present-Kourtney just wants to wallow in self-pity. I get up and plug the phone into the outlet in the far corner of the room, ridding myself of the anxiety of the imminent conversation I’ll have to have with Tiny.

What are the freaking odds? I swear, this would only happen to me.

What the hell am I supposed to say to convince him and his family that I didn’t do anything? I’m sure the entire company thinks I slept with Matt, so it shouldn’t surprise me that his wife thinks I did, too.

Emma is probably the only person in that entire office that believes me.

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