Page 71 of Fragile Heart

She purses her lips and leans against the doorframe.

“If we leave now, we’ll still be able to get decent seats for the parade. The sunshine will be good for you,” Melissa says. She retreats as she talks, edging behind Emily in the doorway. When I frown, she raises an eyebrow and pushes up her glasses. “You can go right back to nesting as soon as the fireworks are over.And with any luck, Caleb will be back by Wednesday and you’ll have the real deal again.”

One of them, at least. I swallow the groan that thinking of Ethan draws from the depths of my chest. I need to feel his beard again, need to feel it against something other than my lips and cheeks. Lavender bleeds out from me.

Crap.

Melissa’s right. If I stay here for much longer, I’m going to drive myself crazy.

With a sigh, I drop Ethan’s stolen shirt to the bed and disappear into the closet.

“All right. Give me about ten minutes.”

It won’t be enough to fully erase my obsessive nesting the last couple days, but at least it won’t be so obvious that I might as well hold a flashing sign over my head proclaiming I’m out of fucking control right now.

Emily’s voice is lighter. “We’ll hang out on the porch.”

The parade is more enjoyable than I expected. Joan’s coffee shop has a spot in the procession along with Misty Mountain Ranch. Camden cheers especially loud for the ranch’s trail horses, each of them decorated with more red, white, and blue carnations than I think I’ve ever seen in one place before.

By the time we’ve all settled in for the fireworks at the county’s fairgrounds an hour or so south of Creek Falls, my body nearly feels like my own again instead of a primal thing controlled by scents and knots.

The sunset sheds bright golden light over the mountains in the distance, and small lamps are situated every few hundredfeet as a guide for the observers. I brush a bit of dried grass off the large blanket Melissa had pulled from her car.

Camden sits down next to me, a funnel cake perched precariously on a thin paper plate that looks moments away from collapsing.

“Do you like fireworks, Bri?” he asks. “They have those in your city, right?”

“Yes, Denver has lots of fireworks for lots of different occasions. And yes, I do like them.”

I steal a bit of the funnel cake, grinning when he narrows his eyes at me.

“Do they have a parade?” he asks before shoving a bit of funnel cake into his mouth. Powdered sugar falls down his shirt, but he doesn’t notice.

When I shake my head, he frowns.

“There’s a lot of parties, though,” I say. “Last year we went to the baseball game and got to watch their fireworks when it was over.”

Logan, thanks to his training of two of the team’s stars, had gotten us a suite behind home plate. Not that we needed the discount, but the view was perfect for the fireworks afterward. Brett had spent most of the night with his hands all over me, enough that I don’t actually remember most of the game.

The thought sours my stomach, but I try to keep it off my face. My stomach clenches for an entirely different reason, though, when Camden’s father settles in on his other side.

“Here you go, kid,” he says before setting a glowing wand at Camden’s feet. “And I got that bear you wanted.”

Camden drops the funnel cake, a small implosion of powdered sugar covering us both, and grabs the small stuffed animal. It’s a marbled red, white, and blue with a black cowboy hat and black shirt that says the county and year in the same alternating red, white, and blue theme.

“Thanks, Daddy!” he says, climbing onto his knees.

I grab the funnel cake before he can stick a knee into it and focus on the open field around us as Camden cuddles Ethan. Ethan’s low chuckle sends a bolt through me, and I clench my legs. Oh god. I need to figure out a way to put at least one more person between me and Camden because there’s no way I can handle sitting within two feet of Ethan during this entire event.

The universe doesn’t seem to hear my silent pleading, though. Olivia and Hudson sit behind us, chatting with his parents, while Beau and Emily sit on the other side of Ethan. Her parents settle on a blanket to her other side. Melissa perches next to me before I can ask her to switch, to give me just a bit of space within the confines of our group.

An expectant wave of quiet sweeps through the crowd. Camden giggles and eats another bit of his funnel cake.

And then, as if it isn’t enough to be forced so close to Ethan when I want to climb him like a damn tree, a man I don’t recognize comes up to the group.

“There room for one more?” he asks. He feels familiar, but I can’t place him.

“Of course, Triston,” Beau says.

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