Page 129 of Her Maine Risk

Panicked, I look away, but only for a second before I’m drawn back to him like a moth to a flame.

As she talks to him, his eyes flit over her shoulder and find mine in an instant, my heart panging with longing, and then picking up double time.

I’ve missed him.

I’ve missed our rides, our talks, his touch, his kiss, his everything.

We hold eye contact for a long minute, neither of us wanting to look away for fear that this isn’t real. But then Ashley waves her hand in front of his face to get his attention, and he slowly blinks, his focus going back on her.

“Mel, he’s crazy about you. You had to have seen that for yourself just then,” Ally says.

“I did,” I whisper. Because it’s true. I saw everything he was feeling in that look – longing, want, need, desire, regret.

But it doesn’t matter if he’s a lying cheater.

I don’t forgive that.

“I know Ashley was there for you when it all happened, but let me give you a piece of advice,” she says. “I thought Jake was unfaithful to me, you remember?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, do you also remember what you said to me on the porch that morning when you found me?”

I sigh, because yes, I did remember. “I asked you if you trusted him, and you said you did the day before, but you weren’t sure in that moment.”

“Then what?” she urges, and I look away. “You said that if I trusted him the day before, then I shouldn’t let that waiver until I knew everything. You said that jumping to conclusions was natural, but not to let them make me think something that isn’t real.”

“Why do you remember that so vividly?”

“Because it meant everything to me, Mel. I trust you to always give me the best advice. The advice I need to hear, not just some crap you spout to pacify me and my feelings. So, why don’t you listen to me for once, okay?”

“Okay,” I whisper, and she smiles softly.

“I know you think he never changed, and you saw him with another woman, but did you let him explain that maybe it wasn’t what you saw? Did you let him talk? Or did you just tell him what you thought and that was that?”

“Um, I don’t know,” I tell her, playing with the ends of my hair.

“I call bullshit,” she says. “You were hurt, and I get that. But maybe, just maybe, he has a reason. And I think you two just need to talk – calmly. No assumptions, and no pasts. Just you, and him, and what you know to be true. I don’t know him like you do, and so I’m sure there’s something else going on.”

I mull over what she said, and I still don’t know.

“I’m afraid I’ll just believe whatever he says because I want to. Because I miss him.”

“I know you won’t do that.”

Ashley sits back down with our drinks and slides me my glass of rosé. I reach for it with a slight tremble in my hand and take a long drink, hoping it’ll settle my nerves.

“He wants to talk to you,” she tells me, and I look up at her, and then over to him, watching him wipe down the bar as he listens to the woman in front of him give him her order. And where he would normally smile and wink, he doesn’t. His scowl is ever-present, even when the woman is so clearly trying to get him to look at her boobs in her low-cut shirt.

“Alright,” I hear myself saying, my eyes never leaving him.

I love watching the way Alex moves behind the bar – so confident and sure of himself. His forearms flex when he leans forward, and his fingers drum on the wood as he listens to her order. He makes her drink with ease and slides it across the bar to her, running his hand through his hair before taking her money. No special treatment.

“Just go, Mel,” Ash urges, and I look back at her. “I see the way you’re looking at him.”

“I know. But he’s working.”

“I don’t care. I’ll cover for him if I need to. Just go.”

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