Page 76 of Loving Lies (Granton University 3)

It hurt to realize his own best friend had never known him well enough to realize most of his talk was just…talk. But it had also taught him he needed to watch what he said.

“Yes,” Aubrey agreed, eyeing him thoughtfully. “That you are.”

Hobbling past him, Jonah found his way into the front room where he picked up his wallet from the coffee table, which was doubling as his nightstand. Then he waved goodbye to Aubrey, told the kid not to take any more shit from anyone about the play, and he was out the door.

Cane in hand, he slowly trudged to his truck. Technically, he was supposed to wait four months after getting his femur broken before he transferred from crutches to cane, and it had barely been three since the shooting, but Jonah was getting antsy. He needed his mobility back. So, he’d made the switch a couple of days ago.

His crabby boss, Dale, already grumbled about his handicap. He hated how many breaks Jonah had to take and how often he slid a chair up to the grill so he could sit a second before regaining his feet. Jonah wasn’t sure why it mattered; he’d yet to fall behind on his duties. In fact, Marla, a waitress who’d worked there for forever, said he got orders out faster and more accurately than any of the other short order cooks they’d had before. But he guessed some people just liked having something to complain about. Either that, or Dale had seen the news reports about Jonah and was judging him from those.

The diner might specialize in hamburgers, but Dale loved to cook pastries and pies the most. Jonah was always assigned the grill while Dale worked the oven, which was fine by him. He learned how to make hamburgers that rivaled his favorite place in the university’s food district. He was getting decent at fries too, cooking them to golden perfection every time.

Arriving about an hour before the lunch menu opened, he readied his station with one hand, gripping his cane with the other as he hopped on one foot back and forth between the fry grease he was heating up and the grill he was preparing.

He’d also been told he was the cleanest cook the diner had ever seen. But Dale found a way to complain about that too, saying Jonah threw out the grease too often and used so many cleaning supplies to keep his work station tidy. Deciding they needed more vegetable oil today, he set his cane aside so he could pick up a five-gallon bucket of lard and carry it out from the stock closet. It weighed a little over fifty pounds and wasn’t the heaviest thing he’d carried around since breaking his femur, but it did give his leg some twinges the next day.

He didn’t mind the added ache, though. This new life he’d started wasn’t much—he would be the first to admit that—but Jonah found pride in his work. It felt honest, and he liked what he did. He’d found a purpose and a reason to get up each morning. He did his thing at work, then went home to see what new drama was happening with his roommate.

He tried not to think about Tess, but thoughts of her crept into his head anyway. Constantly. He hoped she’d completely forgotten him, because if she thought about him as much as he thought about her, he’d feel like a total snake right now for causing her pain. Because this hurt. It hurt, and yet it soothed to think about her, and it made him smile and want to weep at the same time. He wouldn’t wish this kind of agony on anyone, especially Tess.

God, he missed her. Shaking his head, he tried not the think about the night she’d woken him at two in the morning when she’d crawled into his bed and demanded he cheer her up. But he did anyway, until a hot splash of grease from the fryer jumped up and bit him in the hand.

Cursing under his

breath, he stuck his thumb knuckle into his mouth and sucked the sting away before adjusting the temperature.

“Ticket,” Marla called as she clipped an order to the metal ring hanging in the small window separating the diner from the kitchen. “Time to start lunch, boys.”

Jonah hopped over on his good leg, not wanting to overstress the bad one, and leaned in to read the order. As he did, the door in the diner opened and a bell jingled to announce a new arrival.

He couldn’t see who came in from his vantage point, not until a pair of girls walked past his window.

He froze as he caught sight of blazing red, curly hair. He immediately ducked out of view. When he realized she hadn’t seen him, he cautiously leaned back over so he could see out the window again.

His heart stuttered in his chest with longing. God, she looked good. Air swelled in his lungs until he was almost lightheaded from the rush. He reached for the edge of the window to brace himself as he openly gawked.

In the diner, Bailey chattered on, talking a mile a minute about something or other while Tess found them a booth and slid in. Instead of sitting across from her, however, Bailey sat beside Tess. Jonah frowned, wondering at that until another couple took the seat across from them. His breath caught when he recognized both of the new people.

Einstein’s protector, Paige, cuddled into the booth with the very guy Jonah had seen hugging Tess in front of Grammar Hall. She wasn’t hugging him today, though. And he was completely into Paige. He even leaned in to kiss her neck and whisper something in her ear before he closed his eyes and smelled her hair.

Returning his attention to Tess’s face, Jonah felt pulverized. She wasn’t smiling. Had that jerk dumped her to take up with Paige? But, no, that didn’t feel right. She didn’t seem at all bothered by the couple practically making out across from her. He knew he shouldn’t feel hopeful about that, but damn, the hope rose up his esophagus anyway and filled his entire head.

She wasn’t dating that guy and never had. Thank God.

That didn’t explain her melancholy, though. Confused, he studied her a moment longer. What had happened to her? His Tess had been so adept at smiling. The first moment he’d met her, looking up to see her poised in his hospital room, he remembered how she had smiled at him. He’d always remember the happy curve of her lips.

So, why wasn’t she smiling now? Why did she look so sad? Tess should never be sad.

Frustration gnawed at him as he tugged the order in front of him from its ring and hobbled back to the grill.

He couldn’t see out into the diner at all from his work station, but he kept eyeing the window as he fixed his first meal of the day.

Working in Granton, even on the opposite side of town from the university, he should’ve known she might come in eventually. He’d seen some of his old football cronies a few times, not that they had noticed him, but he’d seen them. He’d grown out his hair and even started a beard in the past few months he’d been out of the hospital. He didn’t look anything like the clean-cut Jonah Abbott he’d been in January.

He glanced over as the waitress clipped four new orders in the window. Hurrying to finish the last order, he piled everything onto a plate, grabbed up the ticket to slip under it and hopped on one leg to the window. After setting the plate down, he slapped the bell, letting Marla know an order was up, and he snagged the new ticket. When he saw it was for table number three where Tess had sat down, he shuddered out a shaky breath.

Three orders were the same, a cheeseburger with fries. But the fourth person wanted a bacon chicken ranch salad. He wasn’t sure which one of them wanted which, but it really didn’t matter. He was going to cook three of these meals. And they would be going to her table.

Unable to help himself, he leaned forward some more to peek out the window, knowing she probably wouldn’t see him even if she glanced over. She wasn’t paying a lot of attention to much of anything, actually, not even Bailey who was telling some kind of story as she flapped her hands madly, making the couple across from her laugh. Tess, however, focused a little too heartily on how she was idly stirring a packet of sugar into her iced tea.

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