Page 35 of Pomegranate Kiss

No matter how much she drank though, she couldn’t erase the memories of Cam that haunted her in a carousel of all the places they’d spent time together. Waterfront Park? Ruined. Magnolia Cemetery? Off limits now. Even her own house had been tainted by the woman’s presence. No matter how much she wanted to hate Camilla Muhuri and no matter how many calls and texts Lex ignored, grief rocked through her with an intensity she didn’t think she’d survive.

Lex took another sip of her dark and stormy, the spice from the ginger beer numbing out her tongue with how many she’d drank at this point.

“As much as I’d love to see the drunken shenanigans you’ll get up to this weekend, I’m going to have to cut you off, sis,” Matty said, lifting one of those carved eyebrows.

Lex thrust her middle finger at him. “Since when are you the responsible one, Matty-be-damned? You’re barely showing up for your shifts on time.”

“Trust me, I don’t want to be the responsible one either,” Matty said, holding the rag in his hand to clean the bar. “But I don’t want to have to kick you out of Gin Mill, and watching you wreck yourself for weeks isn’t my idea of a good time. Lucky for you, I called in the cavalry.”

Lex lifted her head, wincing as the room spun for a moment. Maybe she’d drunk a bit more than planned. She should call an Uber to drag her ass home. But home was the last place she wanted to be, where she’d be alone with her memories.

“When Matty said you looked like shit, he wasn’t kidding.” Adrian’s voice came from behind her. “I mean, he tends to exaggerate, so we had to come see for ourselves.”

Lex let out a groan. “You’re an asshole, Matty. And Adrian, don’t you have a wife to be fucking into the bed right now?”

“We put a pause on it to see you,” Danny said, sliding into the empty seat beside her and looking far too chipper. Adrian took the adjacent one. “And we were right in the middle of some seriously steamy shit too.” Adrian let out a groan at the comment, placing his head into his hands.

Lex rolled her eyes and drank another sip from her dark and stormy. Her normal modus operandi for shaming the pain away was finding as many willing participants as possible to spread their legs for her. Yet ever since Cam, when she went to the club she stalled out. Her mouth and heart betrayed her, and sheended up excusing herself out of at least a dozen hookups. Mitch had noticed something was up, and he’d been casting her longer than average looks.

“Well, here I am. There’s nothing wrong with getting a little plastered once in a while,” Lex muttered. “Not like I’ve been irresponsible at work or anything.” Adrian and Danny exchanged one of those stupid couple looks, and Lex resisted the urge to deck both of them. She wouldn’t sit around as some museum exhibit to be gawked at. Come all and see the woman dumb enough to fall headfirst in love get rejected for the thousandth time. When will she learn? Oh, never.

“Well then you won’t mind if we keep you company,” Danny insisted. Lex loved and hated her sister-in-law right now, but the woman was nothing if not persistent. She and Adrian really were meant for each other.

“Be my guest,” she said, sweeping an arm out to gesture at the seats. “Not my bar.”

She tipped back a little more of the drink, the numbness not doing shit to stem how her chest throbbed, scooped like a grapefruit until she became a hollow husk.

“So, I heard from Cam,” Danny said, looking toward Adrian, even though she spoke loud enough for the bar to hear. Lex froze at the sound of the name. Part of her wanted to know so, so badly what was going on with the woman while the other part of her dreaded even the slightest mention.

“How’s she doing in school?” Adrian asked, also fake and loud. Lex hadn’t said a word to her siblings or Danny about what happened with her and Cam—that secret she planned on taking to her grave with her. However, her nosy as fuck sibs had been casting her a messload of long, meaningful looks as of late, and she suspected some had pieced things together. Lex thanked everything holy Mom and Dad hadn’t sat her down for a heart to heart yet.

“School’s going great. She’s hoping to finish up her degree by next year,” Danny said, reaching forward to accept the Aviation Matty poured for her. “Though her parents are being royal pains in the asses. They’re from Bangladesh, and since Cam is an unmarried woman in their household, they’ve taken it upon themselves to arrange a marriage for her.”

Lex gripped the drink tight enough the glass threatened to crack. The room swirled around her again but this time not from the alcohol. She was going to be sick. The idea of Cam married away to some guy she didn’t even know was enough to make her get up out of her seat. The rum churned in her stomach, begging to upheave.

“Be right back,” Lex muttered as she headed for the ladies’ room. She squinted at the bright glare of the lights as she made her way to one of the stalls and closed the door behind her. Lex sank to the floor, hugging her knees tight to her chest, and she tried to force the room to stop spinning. The bile lodged in her throat, but she rarely puked from drinking.

The door creaked open, and she caught a pair of familiar Doc Martens approaching from the gap beneath the stalls.

A knock sounded on her stall door. “I’m sorry,” Danny said from the other side of the door. “I shouldn’t have sprung the news on you like that.”

“Why should I care what your friend does?” Lex responded, her voice coated in acid. “Let her get married to some random guy her parents picked out.”

Danny knocked again. “I see you on the floor there. Let me in?”

Lex clutched her legs tighter to her chest, tempted to ignore Danny until she went away. However, she found herself reaching for the latch and nudging the door open. Danny slipped inside the tight space and locked it shut again with a click, slumping on the opposite side of her.

“We all had the feeling something was going on between you and Cam. I spent enough time with you both to piece things together, and Nellie had her suspicions. Adrian had you both pegged from the first day you guys met.”

Lex pressed her forehead to her knees. “Thanks. I already knew you were a bunch of nosy assholes who gossip too much.”

Danny nudged her in the leg. “None of that shit. You love us nosy assholes, even if you’ll never admit it. But Lex, you haven’t been talking about this shit with anyone for weeks now, and we’ve been worried. I know dropping the bomb back there was underhanded, but for once you didn’t school your features at the mention of her, and I needed something to go on.”

“You fit in with the rest of my family just fine. You’re determined to climb all over each other’s business like a bunch of dumb puppies. We had a six-month fling, then she decided to up and move away at the end of it.” Lex forced her tone from shaking even though her fingers didn’t take the cue.

“How do you know she wouldn’t have made it work?” Danny asked. “Savannah’s a few hours away, and she planned on visiting on weekends.”

Lex shot her a poisoned glance. “We’ve sure been seeing a lot of her this past month. Besides, Savannah is in a different state. In case you didn’t forget, I’m still on parole. She made her intention loud and clear.”

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