Page 59 of Fa-La-La-La Faking It
She’d done it again. She’d gotten too excited. Too invested. Too dang hopeful. When would she ever learn to rein herself in? A heart could only get broken so many times before it shattered completely.
Adaline dropped her head in her hands and gave in and let herself cry. She cried until her tears ran dry. Then she did what she always did when something like this happened—she washed her face and vowed to make herself small enough to fit the world around her instead of trying to stretch everything and everyone to accommodate her oversize wants and desires.
Then, just as she finished making that familiar, fragile promise to herself, the bells on the front door chimed. The bakery wasn’t even open today. Apparently, someone had decided to ignore the Closed sign and waltz inside anyway. She must’ve left the door unlocked after she’d taken Fuzzy for his walk earlier.
She sniffed, forced her lips into a smile and went to see who it was. Her footsteps stalled the second she spotted Jace. The stricken look on his face said it all...
Things were about to go from bad to worse.
Jace had dragged his feet coming to Cherry on Top, but he couldn’t postpone it any longer. Adaline had encouraged him every step of the way with Uncle Gus. She deserved to hear what happened this morning at the senior center, and he owed it to her to explain everything in person, no matter how much it hurt.
He swallowed hard as he drank in the sight of her. With her fresh-scrubbed face and hair swept back in a high ponytail, she looked as close to the fifth-grade version of Adaline as he’d seen her thus far. Jace wasn’t sure why the similarity surprised him the way it did. He’d been chasing ghosts all day...trying to recapture something he’d never really had. It only made sense that seeing Adaline one last time would take him back to a place he no longer wished to remember.
“Hey,” she said. She fiddled with her hands like she didn’t know what to do with them.
Jace glanced around for anxiety pies but didn’t see any. Maybe he was only imagining the haunted look in her eyes. Or maybe he was time traveling again, catching a glimpse of the pain he was about to inflict before it really happened.
“Hey,” he said, and his voice sounded wooden and wrong, even to his own ears.
Just get through this, and then you can put this town and everything in it in your rearview mirror once and for all.
He couldn’t stay in Bluebonnet—not after the things Gus had said to him this morning. After he’d left the senior center, he’d gone straight to Gus’s cabin and packed up his things. Then he’d made arrangements for the rest of the Christmas trees on the lot to be donated to a composting initiative. A crew from the company was scheduled to pick up all remaining trees tomorrow evening. By midnight on Christmas Eve, there would be no trace of Jace Martin left in Bluebonnet, just as Adaline had predicted.
“Are you okay?” she asked, but she didn’t make a move to come closer. “How did things go with Gus?”
“Not great,” he said, and for the first time all day, Jace felt like he might break down and cry.
He clenched his teeth and ordered himself to hold it together. Never in his life had he shed a tear in front of a woman, and he wasn’t about to start now. All those times he’d been told he was too closed off and distant for a real romance had been right on the money. And now, irony of ironies, he felt more vulnerable and real with his fake girlfriend than he’d ever been with anyone else.
All his life he’d bestowed hero worship on Gus Martin. Was it any wonder he was screwed up in the relationship department?
“Oh, Jace. I’m so sorry,” Adaline said, and this time, she did come closer. She rushed toward him like she wanted to throw her arms around him. But as soon as she was an arm’s length away, she came to an abrupt halt, almost like she’d run smack into an invisible wall.
It’s me, Jace thought.I’m the wall.
He dragged a hand through his hair. He needed to get this over with and say what he’d come here to say before he did something utterly foolish like change his mind.
“Listen, sweetheart. I’m sorry. I really am, but I’m done here. I need to go home.”
Adaline looked at him like he’d just spoken to her in a foreign language. “Home?”
He nodded. “To Texas Tidings.”
“Oh, right. The Christmas tree farm.” She tried to smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes.
She’d thought Bluebonnet was home to Jace now. It was an honest mistake. He might’ve even thought so too...until his uncle had told him in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t welcome here.
Adaline glanced past him, and her gaze landed on his truck parked just outside. Everything he’d brought with him when he’d arrived in town was neatly packed and stored in the bed of the pickup, visible to all.
Her eyes flashed. “You mean you’re leavingnow?As in, right this minute?”
“Yes. I’m sorry.” He couldn’t stop apologizing, even though he knew they were just empty words. If he really didn’t want to hurt her like this, he’d show up for her like he said he would. He’d made her a promise, and now he was letting her down at the eleventh hour. “I can’t stay for the wedding.”
“Can’t?” She arched a brow. “Or won’t?”
Both, Jace thought, but he just stood there, feeling woefully out of place in her cheery, sugar-coated corner of the town square.
He waited for her to read him the riot act, which he most definitely deserved.
