Page 85 of For Butter or Worse
“Well, thankfully, you’re still at the hospital.” The nurse swiped the phone off the side of the bed and pocketed it. “I’m going to keep this for your own good. And I’m getting the doctor back in here.”
“We’d love to see him again. And please tell him I said that,” Gavin replied.
“No, that’s not necessary.” Leo started to sit up, but the nurse planted a hand firmly on his shoulder and pushed him back onto the bed.
“You have a family history of heart disease, so you’re not going anywhere until the doctor checks on you.”
“Is it legal for you to take my phone? That’s my property.” Leo’s mind raced. He hadn’t known about Charlie’s new role on the show. If he’d known that before seeing Nina, he would’ve handled everything differently. He needed to call her and explain the situation.
“Actually, you took my phone.” Gavin reached into his other pocket and handed the nurse Leo’s phone, taking back his own. “Don’t worry, I’ll stay six feet from him so he can’t so much as lunge to open an app.”
“Gavin...” Leo began.
But the monitor on his heart rate unleashed a wild siren of a noise as a warning.
The nurse pointed to the screen. “No phone. Nurse’s orders.”
He didn’t know how, but the first moment he could do something to help Nina, he would. He wanted to prove to her that he wasn’t just another guy trying to tear her down before she wrote him off completely. His stomach sank at the realization that she had possibly already written him off.
32
NINA
“Harder,” Nina said into the pillow. She was facedown with her body pressed against the firm surface. Her world was spinning and she needed to feel anchored to something, even if it was her sister’s portable massage table.
“If I go any harder you’ll leave here in a cast,” Sophie replied. She’d been working on Nina’s back for the last half hour, trying to ease the stress knot that was giving Nina a splitting headache.
“Do what you have to do.” She was numb emotionally; why not physically as well?
All men, apparently, were the worst. She still hadn’t been able to understand Leo’s indifference about their relationship ending. Even if he didn’t want to be with her, weren’t they friends, at the very least? Yes, the text she’d sent had been shitty, but she’d also followed up to explain her mistake. Did she really deserve the cold response he’d given her at the hospital?
The simple answer was that he didn’t care about her the same way she cared about him. She was just thrown by how much he’d changed. She really thought she’d seen a whole new Leo, when it turned out the old one had just been waiting to make a comeback.
“I’m stopping. My hand feels like it might fall off.”
Nina lifted herself up and wrapped the sheet around her. “But my ex stole my job and Leo hates me.”
“You quit the job. And, reminder, Leo never said he hates you.”
No, he didn’t say he hated her, but he didn’t have to, either. His good-guy act tricked her into thinking there might be potential between them, but her feelings were all in her head. She wasn’t going to see him again, andthatwas what left her feeling as exposed as a plucked chicken.
She touched her face and felt pillow indents.
“Now get dressed. We’re gonna go get drunk.” Sophie left the room without another word.
Nina blinked after her.
Escaping LA had been necessary. Which is why they’d driven a little over an hour away to Ojai, where they’d grown up. While it was a massive tourist destination because of its vineyards, spas and gorgeous blush-pink sunsets, it was also a small town. Many of the residents owned farms, and the sisters had driven behind an actual tractor once they turned off the highway toward the Ojai Valley Inn.
Going back to their childhood town seemed like the perfect way to escape from thoughts of Leo and Charlie. She felt bad—and frustrated—at leaving Jasmine to deal with the restaurant for the night, but she couldn’t face the journalists who would fill the tables. The same ones who’d apparently followed her from lunch with Charlie to the hospital with Leo and captured her breaking down in tears after she left Leo, which had then gone viral on Twitter.
She shouldn’t have been surprised to see people latching on to her crying. She’d been called “emotional” so many times online that she’d created a filter so she wouldn’t see those mentions. Fans labeled her as “moody” and “aggressive” whenever she so much as raised an eyebrow, so she could only imagine what her comments looked like now that there was evidence of her shedding actual tears. Which is why the second Sophie got in her car, she decided to avoid her apps. She’d spend the night with Sophie at the hotel, recharge in Ojai and then go back to LA.
The bar Sophie brought them to was a true dive, with lighting so low they could barely see each other and every cheap, disgusting beer imaginable on tap. But they had a beautiful selection of whiskey lining the top shelf—wine wouldn’t do—and she needed a stronger option. The burn would remove all the bad she’d experienced that day.
She sat on a cracked leather swivel chair right at the counter and ordered an old-fashioned from a bartender with a vibrant pink pixie cut.
Sophie peeled the label off her sweating craft beer. “Must’ve been really weird to be in the same room with Charlie again.”
