Page 34 of Follow Your Bliss

“Now I want to know what the third card is. What did you say it’s for? How to overcome the challenges?” The sun disappeared behind a cloud, and rain sprinkled the windshield, the tiny pinpricks of a hurricane moving in. Thankfully traffic was moving now.

“Yes.” She flipped over the card, gathering all three into a stack in her hands. “How to overcome is Hathor, Egyptian goddess of joy. She’s usually at the beginning of something new, encouraging you to go for what you’ve been thinking about. Jason! This is perfect!”

Adrenaline kicked through my system. “Really?”Okay, St. Dorothy. I hear you.

Her returning smile was beautiful, her eyes unabashed. “Yeah! Does it resonate with how you feel about the sponsorship? Or is there something else you’ve been thinking about going after?”

I glanced at her—did her eyes just drop to my mouth? Swallowing hard, I checked my mirrors and switched lanes. “Yeah, I think there is.”At least, since I met you again.

“Then it looks like you should totally go for it.” She stacked the cards back up together and busily flipped through them for a few minutes before putting them away. She yawned and stretched. “Do you mind if I take a nap? I was up late and early.”

“No, go ahead.” I had plenty to think about to entertain myself. Mom desperately wanted me to be who I was before Kasey, a church-going man who wanted to sit at a desk all day designing houses for other people. Alex and Becca treated me like I was still that person.

But I’d never be that Jason again. I’d been through too much not to come out the other side a little wiser. And I was happy about how I was changing. Why would I want to be the naive idiot who fell in love with my eyes closed, the asshole who valued my cruel girlfriend’s opinions over my family’s feelings? Or the dumbass who thought that to keep her, I had to lose them. Why would I want to move backwards?

It sucked that I was disappointing my family with who I was becoming.

But Rose wasn’t disappointed.

Granted, she hadn’t known me as an adult before Kasey, and barely even as kids. But she seemed to respect the journey I took to be who I was now, and she seemed proud of who I was becoming.

She sighed and shifted in her seat, her head lolling toward me with her eyes closed, long lashes on her pale, pink cheeks.

Yeah, I had a lot of things to think about. I smiled, glancing at Rose. And one of them was making my heart skip a beat.

Rose

“Rose, wake up.”

Everything was still and quiet. I opened my eyes. “We’re there already?”

“I wish. We’re still in Mississippi.”

The clock on his dash read a quarter after noon. We’d been traveling for three hours. “What? Seriously?”

He nodded. “Biloxi. Traffic was a bitch. I was gonna keep pressing on, but my stomach won out. You like pizza?”

After a bathroom break, I met Jason back at our booth where he was scrolling through his phone. “I got you a Diet Coke. And hey, our video of your sewing table went up.” He grinned and handed his phone over to me. “The comments are blowing up. They’re obsessed with you.”

My stomach dropped. “What?” Thousands of likes. He sent it to me to approve last night before he scheduled it, and the video was super cute. I didn’t even look half bad.

I knew better, but I couldn’t stop myself. I scrolled down to the comments.

How big, exactly, was Jason’s cock? Now I needed to know.

“These comments are unhinged.” I raised my eyebrows at him. “Did you read these?”

He shrugged. “I know you don’t need me to tell you that the internet’s basically lawless and not to read the comments. But keep reading. They’re not all unhinged.”

I took a deep breath and scrolled down more.

I laughed out loud. This person needed to stop reading my mind.

My cheeks stung with heat, and I squirmed a little in my seat. “Some potential customers,” I murmured. “But Jason, all these people totally think we’re doing it. There’s more eggplants in the comments than in the produce section at Winn Dixie.” I handed his phone back and picked up mine.

His face was all contrition. “I’m sorry. I never meant for it to—”

The server came back, and the whole time they took our order, Jason shifted in his seat, tearing off little pieces of his napkin.

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