Page 38 of Saved By the Mountain Man

I shook my head, trying not to smile.

“It’s not like that. I was just healing.”

“I bet he helped a lot with that.” She waggled her eyebrows at me.

“Laken!” I cried out and laughed, my cheeks burning now.

She laughed, excited. “Come on, you need to tell me all the juicy details.”

I busied myself, trying to avoid her curious eyes.

“Lunchtime,” Laken said when I didn’t answer her. “Then we can talk while we eat.”

I shook my head. “There’s nothing to say.”

“I don’t believe it,” Laken said, and despite myself, I giggled and blushed again.

“Fine. If it means it will get you off my back…”

“The only way to do it,” she said with a cheeky smile before she turned and walked back to the shelf she was stocking.

I shook my head and smiled.

Laken was a good friend. A little nosy, and a bit of a pain when she wanted to know what was going on like that, but she was there for me, and it had been a while since I’d known someone I knew I could trust.

My friends back in Chicago had all been Jethro’s friends to start off with, and if it came down to choosing sides, there was no doubting which way they would lean.

Here, Laken was on my side just because she was my friend. No politics, no debate.

Come lunchtime, Laken stayed true to her word and dragged me away from the store. We sat in the staff room, eating sandwiches, and she stared at me while I ate.

I laughed when she didn’t let up.

“Are you going to stare at me all day?”

“Just until you tell me.” She tapped her wrist where a watch would be. “We don’t have all day to take lunch, you know.”

I laughed again and then sighed.

“There’s really not that much to tell. Being with Tanner… was like going back to the past. But the past is better where it belongs, you know?”

“So, something happened between you two?”

“I don’t think it could have been any other way. I mean, Tanner and I used to be like two halves of a whole. He was my everything once upon a time. And I thought he felt the same. It just turns out he really didn’t. And now… it’s over.”

I looked at Laken, who studied me while I talked, chewing her sandwich.

“So, you’re not going to see him again?”

“I guess I’llseehim again. I mean, he comes into town for supplies and stuff sometimes. But it’s not like we’ll be seeing each other as anything other than civil residents.Friends.”

Laken groaned. “Nothing worse than calling lovefriendship.”

“What else can it be? I know it sucks.” It sucked more than I could ever explain to her. “But the truth is we don’t belong together, and that’s just how it is. I’m not going to fight him around every turn when I see him, but that’s it.”

My heart ached. Trying to make it seem so simple and straightforward made me realize exactly what it meant. Tanner and I weren’t together, no matter how great the last couple of days had been. He wasn’t my boyfriend. We weren’t even friends. Not really. But if he came to the store, I would be civil toward him, help him professionally as an employee, and if we ran into each other in the town’s streets, I would be civil and say good morning.

But that was as far as it went.

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