Page 82 of Forever and Other Lies

The last of her walls were crumbling. She needed Derek right now. That realization filled her with panic. She shoved backward, nearly toppling them both off the bar stools.

“Whoa.” Derek grabbed the edge of the bar with his left hand while his right arm tightened around her.

She blinked and roughly wiped away fresh tears.

“I have to go,” she said breathlessly, shrugging off his arm and standing. Grabbing her purse, she rushed out the door.

Chapter 40

Jayna rushed out the door, and Derek almost followed. Almost. But he hesitated.

The moment he sat down, he’d noticed how pale she was. Her usually vivid blue eyes were almost vacant. This wasn’t the larger-than-life Jayna who breezed through life without a care. This Jayna was different. This Jayna had a heart. And it was broken.

A lone tear had slid down her cheek, followed by a second, and then a third. A sob, so quiet he barely heard it, escaped her lips. It was the cry of a little girl who had never been comforted. The brokenness that Jayna hid from the world finally seeped out. It pierced his closed-off heart.

Yet he remained seated. He didn’t follow her. If he had, it would change everything. He’d change, and he wasn’t ready for that.

Over a week had passed since that night, and he couldn’t help but wonder how she was.

She said she’d broken up with the paramedic and knowing that brought him relief. The thought of Lance hurting Jayna had been unbearable. Even the thought of the other man touching her, kissing her, had him seething.

What was that? Did he feel possessive of her? Responsible?

Witnessing her heartbreak over losing her friend had caused his heart to break as well.

He was completely out of his depth here.

He’d only agreed to fake date Jayna, to pretend to have feelings for her. Easy. Simple. Oh, no! The joke was on him.

He’d gone and fallen for her.

This realization called for whiskey. The stronger, the better. A tall glass of ‘get over himself’, as Jayna had called it.

A tall glass of ‘get over her’ would be more accurate. It was exactly what this night called for.

His eyes adjusted to the brightly lit bar as he closed the door behind him. Jamie sat at a table in the center of the room. Was Jayna joining her? He felt a surge of excitement, along with regret that this was the only bar in town. How was he going to get over her if they kept running into each other?

Make that two glasses of “get over her.” He should turn and leave. Instead, he walked straight toward Jamie.

“Are you all alone?”

He wasn’t asking because he was wondering where Jayna was. He forced a neutral, bored expression to prove that he didn’t care or wonder about Jayna. Jamie’s lifted eyebrow said she knew differently.

Damn, that woman was intuitive. However, he didn’t believe in fortune-telling or whatever the hell it was that she did.

“I’m just waiting on Jayna. She’s running late, as usual.”

He had no idea why he did, but he pulled out a chair and sat down. “I noticed that about her. She’ll be late for her own funeral.”

“Speaking of Miss Tardy herself,” Jamie laughed when her cell phone rang, and she swiped to answer it. “Yeah, yeah. You’re running late.”

Jamie paused, listening. “Really? Come on, Jayna, no way that happened.”

“Only you,” Jamie chuckled and met his eyes across the table. “Jayna claims that she was blow-drying her hair and got it stuck in the air inlet of the hairdryer.”

It was on the tip of his tongue to ask what shampoo scent she had used today.

“Derek is keeping me company, so I don’t look like a complete loser sitting by myself.”

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