Page 6 of Christmas in Vines

“Rusty?” he teased.

I turned away. “I’m walking away now.”

“See you in a few hours,” he called after me.

Before I left, I took my log-in sheet and headed up to the loft where my temp office was, and I read his name, “Tyler Burrows. Right, I’d forgotten he’d told me that.”

My fingers twitched to log on to my computer, and Facebook stalk him, but I then pulled up a blank Excel sheet and began punching in the records. Flings were just that—flings; no one needed the other’s life story of a background check (even though my dad had made sure to run all these guys through a few).

If anything did progress between me and Tyler, it would just be sexual, nothing more. After Maxwell, I was not in a mental state for any sort of relationship beyond knocking boots. I didn’t need more than that.

Hours later, I had all the files logged in and went down for lunch, but headed to the main house instead of the mess hall the guys would be chowing down in.

My phone rang as Jackie’s name flashed across the screen, and I grabbed it, swiped it open and cocked it to my ear while swallowing my turkey sub. “Hey, Jackie. How are things?”

“Better,” Jackie replied. “My dumbass brother got in trouble at university again, but thankfully, it was a misunderstanding, not him setting the chemistry lab on fire again.”

“Eddie is a pyromaniac,” I laughed.

“He’s turning me into a manic,” Jackie laughed. “But he is a good kid anyway. Anyhow, how did it go last night when I had to leave so abruptly? Did you deal with Max?”

“Oh, yeah,” I replied but refrained from telling her the whole story about Tyler. “It worked out.”

A bit of static rumbled over the phone, and when she came back, Jackie said, “I’ve been telling you this, Willow, you deserve so much more than that rich asshole. He might be able to buy you anything you want, but he can’t see past his reflection to see your emotions. You need someone better.”

“I know,” I replied. “Dad has said it, Marcus has said it, and you’ve said it… many times. I’ll find a good guy one day.”

“You will,” she replied. “Because I live vicariously through you.”

Laughing, I hung up, then finished my sandwich and went back to the warehouse for more work.

* * *

It was past six when Tyler came back to the warehouse, which was odd because he should be getting dinner. I looked up from the checklist I was marking off and asked, “Did you forget something?”

“No,” he leaned over a stack of empty crates and rested his arms on them. His gaze was fixed on me, and again, his unwavering attention tempted me to fidget. “I wanted to get you alone.”

“Why?” I asked, darting my looks from the crates to the sheet.

“I’ve been racking my brain for hours trying to figure out how a sweet girl like you ended up with a douchebag like Maxwell,” he said plainly. “Did he hypnotize you or something?”

Oh.

“You could say that,” I replied. “Maxwell Winslow. I was twenty-two and naïve in college. He was a sophomore and the “it” guy. Believe it or not, he was sweet the first year, attentive and spontaneous while keeping the best grades. I thought I was lucky to find him, a perfect fit, while others waited and searched for years to find theirs.”

“But you were wrong?” Tyler said.

“Dead wrong.” I gave up on the sheet and set it aside. “To be honest, I was stretching it when I said how he was in the first year of our relationship. Yes, he was all those things, to a degree, but I’d started to notice things, things I shoved to the back of my mind and told myself were nothing. You know that meme on the internet that says,every time the universe sendsmeasign, I’m like, OK, but I think I’ll wait for asignier sign.”

“Yep,” he popped the ‘p’.

“That was me,” I replied. “I saw him looking at other girls, but I wasn’t the type of girlfriend who banned a guy from having girl friends. But looking grew to flirting, and flirting grew to touching. I walked in on him just as he’d finished screwing a girl from my year.”

I wrapped my arms around my middle. “He played it that he was drunk, and I did smell vodka on his breath, but what got to me was that was his… was his so-called affection for me so insignificant that a few shots of vodka could make him tumble into bed with another girl?”

Tyler’s face fell. “I’m sorry.”

Shrugging, I reached for the clipboard again. “We broke up a few times, but he kept coming back. It was only last year I made sure to draw the line, but he keeps crossing it. I hope what you did last night will send the final message.”

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