Page 11 of Scr*wed By the Minotaur in Hallow's Cove
I hated the sick swoop in my stomach, the little-girl longing for someone I’d known for less than twenty-four hours. I told myself it didn’t matter. We had both said up front that this was a one-night thing. No promises, no strings. I could respect that. I’d even admired it, last night. Now, in the daylight, it felt like a door closing. Even if it was my own damn hand on the knob.
Still, it stung. I hadn’t lied when I called myself a romantic—I’d just learned to keep those tendencies folded away, pressed and hidden under the weight of disappointment and practicality. But this? This was different. With Rick, for the first time in years, I’d felt something flicker to life.
Instead, I was alone. No note. Not even the hollow comfort of a “this was fun” scrawled on hotel stationery. Just emptiness and the undeniable sense that I’d been a fool to hope for more. I’d had a few one-night stands, but at least we exchanged numberseven if neither of us never called back. And if I was honest, none of them were like this.
I hauled myself upright, every muscle stretching and singing the memory of him. I stared out the window at the blank-sky morning, the sound of birds chirping and distant truck engines just sharp enough to remind me that this wasn’t a dream. My hips ached pleasantly from the way he’d gripped me, the impact of our bodies echoing in every inch of skin. I was angry at myself for hoping. I was the one who had said this was only for the weekend—but there's no way that was normal for a one-night stand. Now I'm pissed at both of us for making it so much more than that.
Maybe it was the intensity of the whole thing—the fucking, the talking, the falling asleep tangled together, so close I could almost believe it was more than transactional pleasure. As I sat there, the anger bloomed and spread throughout me.
Had I been that bad? Was he just putting on a show, faking it the whole time? I’d thought we’d had chemistry, actual, honest-to-god chemistry, but now I wondered if I was just another notch in the bedpost—maybe not even a memorable one at that.
And that made me furious. I’d let him in all the way, shared things I’d never told anyone else—and all I got was a cold pillow and gnawing humiliation.
I balled up the sheets and threw them to the foot of the bed. Then I stared at the ceiling, the endless off-white expanse, and told myself to get it together. This was supposed to be a fresh start. If Rick wanted to ghost me, it was his damn loss. I was still me: stubborn, creative, maybe a little too sentimental. I could do this.
It got easier once I was upright and in motion. I tied my curls up into a poof using my satin headscarf, then showered, scrubbing my skin with unnecessary roughness, then dressed in my favorite overalls and a soft yellow T-shirt that made mycomplexion pop. I built the morning like a shield—protein bar, two cups of coffee, a full face of makeup even though I was only meeting Randy. But still, beneath the armor, I was sore. I was sad.
And I was definitely still thinking of him.
By the time I hit Main Street, the sun was high enough to bounce off every window and blind me with promise. I pulled my bag tight across my body, told myself to walk like I was going somewhere worth being, and let the blooms lining the sidewalk remind me that things could always start over.
I rounded the corner to my new shop, the keys cold in my palm, and immediately froze in the middle of the sidewalk. The world had decided to take a direct, unfiltered piss on me. There, in the morning glare, the hardware store next door to my flower shop stood like a lighthouse of regret, its massive sign blaring HARDWARE.
But it didn’t just say HARDWARE, as I’d noted the day before. It saidRick’sHARDWARE, with the “Rick” in tiny cursive.
How had I missed that?
My face was hot, pulse pounding in my ears. My brain did a slow, reluctant pirouette. It was almost too on the nose—a cosmic prank so obvious I wanted to check the sky for hidden cameras. I felt the world tilt and I had to clutch my bag tighter, as if the weight of my embarrassment would otherwise tip me over. My mind jumped through every moment of last night, all the things I’d whispered in bed with a man whose shop—whose fucking name—was now staring me down at eye level.
Maybe it was a coincidence. But somehow, I knew it wasn’t. I could feel it in the pit of my stomach, roiling, a slow chemical reaction that started as embarrassment and bubbled rapidly into something else.
Rage.
I stood there, staring up at the sign like the answer to my whole stupid life was just a matter of reading it correctly.
Rick’s Hardware.
I marched straight to the door, the bell above it tinkling with the bright cheerfulness of someone who had never been abandoned in a hotel bed. The scent of sawdust and fertilizer hit me, acrid and grounding, but also layered with the faintest trace of the man himself—minotaur musk and whatever clean, citrusy soap he used. I followed the scent to the back of the store, where Rick stood behind the counter, forearms deep in a cardboard box of brass screws. He looked up, and for a split second his face did something—a ripple of surprise, or maybe regret. But then he schooled it, that practiced calm I’d found so stupidly irresistible the night before.
I didn’t give him a chance to say anything. “Hey, neighbor,” I snapped, my smile bright enough to cut glass. “Fancy running into you here. Or, you know, not running into you, since I thought you’d at least be polite enough to say goodbye.”
He blinked, like he’d walked directly into a pane of glass. “Lea. I—”
“Save it,” I said, slamming my palm on the counter. My vision was so tunneled on his face I barely registered the customer two aisles over, pretending to compare brands of duct tape while their eyes flicked over to us every ten seconds. “You know, I thought maybe you were busy. Or shy. Or that I’d read the night wrong. But you didn’t even bother with the classic ‘it’s not you, it’s me.’”
He squared his shoulders, but his hands gripped the counter like he was trying to hold the earth steady. “I thought you were just visiting,” he said, voice even, but with an edge that wasn’t there last night. “You said it yourself. One night.”
My brain buzzed, a rising static that made it hard to hear anything except my own heartbeat. “So it meant nothing to you?You have nights like that all the time?” I tried to rein it in, but the words kept tumbling out, sharp and brittle. “At least give me enough respect to dump me to my face.”
He was quiet for a minute, jaw working beneath the stubble. “It was a night. It was great. But that’s what it was, Lea. You said—”
“I lied!” It came out so hard it startled even me. The word ricocheted off every angle of the shop, and the customer in aisle two abandoned all pretense and openly gawked. I steadied myself on the edge of the counter. “Yeah, I said that, but after last night, I thought maybe…”
And then it was too much, the tightness in my throat threatening to wring the words out as tears.
Rick stared at me, nostrils flaring in that slightly inhuman way, and for a second I thought he was angry. Then I saw it—the way his hands trembled, the way his jaw clenched like he was the one being flayed alive. “Lea, I—fuck. I thought you were leaving! I thought I was doing the right thing. I figured if I ripped the bandage off in the morning, it’d hurt less.”
The rational move would be to walk away. To tell him thanks for the honesty, and then mind my own business, like everyone in my life had always done. But I’d never been rational, and yesterday had only proved it.
