Every Little Thing (Hart's Boardwalk 2)

And I wanted Tom and his little Erin to feel everything I was feeling.

Rage was pretty much running my show.

Erin’s phone didn’t have a password to get into it. She might want to rethink that in the future.

“What are you doing?” Her high, girlish voice trembled.

I scrolled through her contact list.

REX.

I hit call.

“No, Tom, what is she doing?” Erin squealed.

The sound must have made the dog in the apartment below us wince but I didn’t even flinch. I was too focused on destruction.

A deep masculine voice I recognized picked up after the third ring. “Hey, baby, you still at work?”

If I’d been thinking more clearly the affection in his voice would have stopped me from saying anything. But as I later realized, I wasn’t running this show in my right mind. “Rex?”

“Who is this?” He sounded confused, his tone a little sharp, protective.

“This is Bailey Hartwell, Tom Sutton’s girlfriend.”

“Tom, stop her!” Erin cried.

“Bailey, for fuck’s sake.” Tom strode toward me, pleading with his dark eyes.

I whirled away from him and started walking around furniture out of his reach.

“Is that Erin I hear? What’s going on?” Rex demanded.

“I just caught Tom fucking Erin on our couch. I’m guessing since Tom came home last night and showered before getting into bed and then shoved me off him when I tried to have sex with him that this isn’t the first time Tom and Erin have been together.”

“What?” His voice was hoarse, sounding far away.

“We got cheated on, Rex. Just thought you should know.” I hung up and threw Erin’s phone on the nearby chair.

She stood clinging to the throw, her shoulders shuddering as she sobbed.

Her obvious pain made me feel nothing.

Numbness had settled over me. I turned to stare at the man I’d spent ten years of my life with. “I thought we deserved each other. But I deserve better. I can’t believe I wasted ten years on you. In case that wasn’t clear enough: it’s over, Tom.”

I slipped the stilettos back on and strode out, shrugging off his hand as he tried to stop me, ignoring him as he hurried down the stairs at my back, his voice, his presence, like an annoying fly I’d gotten used to hovering over me.

Nothing he said penetrated my fog. I couldn’t feel his touch or what I later remembered as his pleading, his apologies.

Instead I got in my car and pulled away so fast I almost clipped him, vaguely aware of him cursing and jumping out of my way as I drove off.

“I am going to kill that son of a bitch!” Jessica, my best friend, yelled, pacing back and forth in front of me in her living room. Louis the pup followed her every move, so now and then they tripped over one another mid-pacing.

I hadn’t known where I was driving until I’d pulled up outside Jess and Cooper’s place. Cooper was working at the bar but Jess was home.

Somehow I’d found the words to tell her what had just happened and her reaction broke through the numbness that had settled over me.

Nausea was the thing I was feeling most at the moment. Nausea caused by uncertainty, by fear, because suddenly—