Page 90 of Break My Heart
‘At seven in the morning? And you just happened to set your alarm for six.’ He shakes his head. ‘Now I get why you were in such a hurry to leave my apartment.’
‘Sawyer, I’m telling you the truth. I had no idea he was coming here. He said he’s on his way to Chicago and just decided to stop.’
‘He’d take the highway to Chicago, not country roads. He wouldn’t come out this way unless he was coming to see you.’
‘Ask him.’ I point to the door. ‘Go in there and ask him if you don’t believe me.’
‘And you think I’d believe anything he says?’ Sawyer turns and walks to his car. ‘I knew this was too good to be true.’
‘You really want to end it this way?’ I yell. ‘Because of some stupid misunderstanding?’
He opens his car door but doesn’t get in. ‘What do you expect me to do, Gina? I caught you lying about him twice now. You wouldn’t do that if there was nothing to hide.’ He gets in his car and leaves.
‘Everything okay?’ Ryder asks as he comes outside.
‘No, it’s not okay!’ I storm up to him. ‘My boyfriend just broke up with me because of you!’
‘Boyfriend?’
‘Yes.’ I put my hands on my hips, wanting to strangle Ryderfor the trouble he’s causing. ‘Sawyer’s my boyfriend, or hewasuntil a few minutes ago. And yes, I know you don’t approve and that you think I’m stupid for dating my competition, but I really don’t care what you think. You don’t get to tell me who to date.’
‘Gina, I wasn’t—’ He sighs. ‘I’m sorry it didn’t work out.’
‘Are you?’ I ask, looking up at him.
He doesn’t answer.
‘I can’t believe he just left like that. He wouldn’t even listen to me.’ I take a deep breath, trying to calm down because my heart is still beating like crazy.
‘C’mon.’ Ryder takes my arm. ‘Let’s go inside. We’ll try the cider.’
‘I don’t care about the damn cider!’ I say, yanking away from him. ‘I may have just lost Sawyer for good!’
‘Then he wasn’t the right guy for you.’
‘Are you kidding? Sawyer was perfect for me!’ I toss my hands up. ‘He’s everything I’ve ever wanted. He’s smart, funny, we like the same things, and he’s just as competitive as me. I finally found a guy I could see a future with and now .?.?.’ My voice trails off.
‘So you never thought I was the guy for you,’ Ryder says, pretending to be hurt.
‘Don’t make this about you. You’re not going to make me feel bad for saying that. We both know there was never a future for us. What we had was a friends-with-benefits thing. That’s it.’
‘Doesn’t mean it couldn’t have been more. We didn’t give it a chance.’
‘We dated for two years. That’s more than enough time to figure out if we wanted a future together.’ I walk past him and go into G’s.
‘This place is everything you have,’ Ryder says, following behind me. ‘Are you really willing to give it up just because you’re upset about some guy?’
‘He wasn’t just some guy.’ I turn back to face Ryder. ‘He was the guy I was falling in love with.’
‘If it doesn’t work out with him, you’ll get over it. You’ll eventually move on. But if you let this place go out of business, then what?’
‘I never said I’m going out of business.’
‘If you spend all week crying over that guy and forget about the competition, there’s a good chance this place won’t make it. You need this, Gina. You need to win, or at least place high enough to get some press out of it to draw tourists here. If you don’t, you’ll be relying on the locals. You really think that’s enough to keep you in business?’
‘They came here before,’ I say, standing up straighter. ‘Opening week, this place was packed.’
‘Because it was new and you were practically giving away the beer. Now that’s over, and the town’s going to support a guy who was born here, not some woman who just moved here to open a brewery.’
