Page 133 of Chasing Sparks

“Lucille told me Ori wants nothing to do with you. What are you going to do—camp outside her apartment?”

Talk about a lightbulb moment.

Lucille is safe at the farm. Braden might hate her, but he’d never let anything happen to her. Plus, there’s always at least one HSI agent watching her at all times—even if I’ve yet to figure out who they are.

She’s covered.

And that leaves me free to take care of the woman I love.

Trace smirks, catching the shift in my expression. “Youaregoing to camp outside Ori’s place, aren’t you?”

I take another swig from the flask before handing it back. “Damn straight.”

Chapter 19

You Can’t Stop Me

Ori

You know those days when all you want to do is go home, crawl under a blanket, and never emerge?

Well, stretch that out for a week, and you’ve got my life right now.

The past six days have been a special kind of hell—one long spiral of regret, anger, and heartbreak—ever since my final blow up with Ash.

But instead of escaping to a blanket fort, I’ve been bombarded by a rash of needy and clueless customers.

Most days, I love the people who frequent the store, along with their offbeat questions and requests. I really do.

Today is not one of those days.

Each person’s cheerfulness grates on me more than the last, shredding my nerves until there’s nothing left but a frayed, irritable mess.

Even with the onslaught of business, my brain refuses to stop spiraling over the pitiful state of my love life.

And if the chaos at the store and in my mind wasn’t enough, Eddie has been hounding me daily with one small issue after another on the Dean Estate restoration. A loose floorboard here, a door that won’t close there—little things that shouldn’t matter but somehow pile up into one big headache. Every time I think things are finally under control, the house finds a new way to mock me.

And I’m ready to throw in the towel on all of it.

You’d think someone as smart as I am could handle all this without losing it. Seriously, I’m a bright woman. Top of my class in college—okay, one of the top, but still, I’m damn smart. And sensible.

Then I met Asher Hammond and turned into a googly-eyed teenager, hopelessly mooning after the unattainable stud.

A man with a storied reputation that reaches well past the borders of Sparkwood.Everyoneknows about Ash’s dating history—if you can call doing the horizontal mambo with six women in a week dating. Hell, even the elderly woman in the drugstore shot me a sympathetic look when she passed me in the aisle.

In Sparkwood, secrets travel faster than the speed of light.

Everyone knows.

And because it’s Sparkwood, no one can resist reminding me in the most passive-aggressive ways possible—pitying looks, fake concern, and thinly veiled gossip. It’s suffocating.

Somehow, though, despite being surrounded on all sides by the truth, I was the last to see it.

I believed it might be different for Ash and me.

That I was different. That he’d wake up one day, realize I was exactly what he wanted and needed, and we’d share a life together.

A life which didn’t include his former lover, their love child, and me as the third wheel on this cockamamie ride.

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