Page 83 of How I Love You

None of this would be happening if I’d kept my distance. If I’d treated her like the distraction I’d known she would be from the start and shut her out, I might not have missed the Barto/Syd weirdness. I might’ve figured everything out sooner, and man, maybe even solved the whole thing before he’d dropped me as his PI.

And obviously, if I hadn’t cared about her feelings or what she thought of me, I would’ve forced her and Hope out of that house in the beginning, not caring at all if it made me a controlling jerk in her eyes. In face, it might’ve helped me in a lot of ways. That wasn’t someone she’d want in a partner, so it probably would’ve kept her away from me, too.

But that wasn’t what I’d done. Instead, she’d been dragged into a situation that could’ve gotten her hurt by my client, and now she was hurt because of me, just in a different way.

My chest tightened just thinking about it, but I’d rather her be hurt because I left than hurt in a more permanent way, thanks to my bad judgment on a case.

She’d get over me, I told myself. She was strong. She’d find someone else, someone who wouldn’t make bad calls that dragged her into danger.

Or… run when he was scared he’d do it again.

Yeah, it wasn’t lost on me that this was a move a better man might not make. But I didn’t trust myself to be that man, so here I was.

“Pull over!” Austin said suddenly, pointing at the exit with the rest stop. “I really gotta pee.”

Shaking my head at his dramatics, I took the exit, pulling into the rest stop’s parking lot and finding a spot in front of the public bathrooms. “Hurry up, and don’t talk to strangers.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said as he hopped from the truck and headed through the dark blue door of the bathroom.

Exhausted, I put my seat all the way back, throwing my arm over my eyes. “Lemme know when he’s back.”

“You sure you’re okay with this?” Colt asked.

“Huh?” I glanced over at him, blinking as the truck’s cabin came back into focus.

“Leaving. You good with it?”

I let out a slow breath, eyes on the ceiling now. “What kind of question is that? Our business is in Colorado. This was always the plan.”

Colt didn’t respond right away, but I could hear his fingers tapping idly on the armrest. After a long stretch of silence, he finally spoke. “It wasn’tthathard to start our business, you know. We’ve been through a lot worse.”

“What’s your point?”

“My point is,” Colt continued, “I like Charlotte Oaks. Austin does, too. You telling me you didn’t like it there?”

I frowned. “Are you kidding? I hated it. Everywhere I went, someone knew me or my business, and don’t even get me started on the sheer number of events they host in that town square. What is their event budget in that town, anyway? Maybethat’swhat happened to the freaking treasure.”

“Right… so, you did like it, you’re just pretending you didn’t.”

“It doesn’t matter if I did,” I said wearily.

“Why not?” Colt shrugged, as if it were the simplest thing in the world. “It’s a good town. People are nice. We could run the business from there just as easily as we do from Colorado.”

I shot him a look, not sure if he was messing with me. But Colt’s expression was calm—level, even.

“You’re serious?” I asked, my brow furrowing. “You really think it’s that simple?”

Colt shrugged again. “Why not? What’s really stopping us?”

“Well, for starters, I called Mom on Dakota’s porch earlier trying for a Hail Mary,” I told him bitterly, even though I’d known when I did it that I probably didn’t deserve it.

“Called her about what?”

“I wanted to see what she thought of me keeping Austin with me for a while. In Charlotte Oaks. He stays with me half the time anyway, so I figured she wouldn’t mind.”

“What’d she say?” he asked. His tone told me he already knew the answer.

I snorted, effectively telling him he was right.

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