“Of course,” Lila replied. “I have to get back to the clinic. That’s all. I hope everything works out for you.”
She was going to have to hope since her father likely wouldn’t bring her back to the clinic again. Of course, once her father found out she’d helped his daughter with her masturbation techniques, showing her how to order a vibrator over the Internet on her phone, the relationship probably would have gone to hell anyway. Like all her relationships had.
She was too fussy. Too picky. Too intimidating. Too uptight.
Too much.
It wasn’t anything she hadn’t heard before.
So why did it hurt so damn much coming from him? It was an actual ache in her gut. She should have stuck to her plan. Work. Sleep. Visit with her sister. Repeat.
Except she didn’t have much work to do. She didn’t sleep well at all. And her sister didn’t have a ton of time for her.
When had she become this needy, clingy thing?
“Whatever he said, he didn’t mean it,” Noelle offered. “He’s not good with women. Or people at all, really.”
She disagreed. He was excellent with everyone, and he’d meant every word he’d said. “Everything’s fine. Like I said, I have to get back to work.”
“I guess you changed your mind about lunch.” Dixie was staring at her with a frown. “You don’t want the bacon anymore? You know we had to make it. We didn’t simply have it sitting around in case someone wanted it.”
She didn’t want any of this. Somehow she’d thought she would come down here and everything would fall into place. It was a sleepy town, and she’d made the mistake of thinking it would be different here. In the city, most of the time people ignored her. No matter how good she was at her job, there was always someone who could take her job. She’d thought she would have a place here. She hadn’t expected to make a ton of friends, but she certainly hadn’t thought people would actively hate her.
What the hell had she done? She’d given up a great job, awesome salary, pretty apartment, and for what? Everything she had was sunk into a clinic no one wanted to come to and a house that was full of a dead man’s junk. Now she apparently had a dog to take care of, and she would have to avoid the hot sheriff at all costs.
Not that she would be here long if the town turned on her.
“I left the cash on the table. I’ll brown bag it from now on.”
Dixie sighed and put a hand on her hip. “Food’s not good enough for you?”
Yeah, she’d gotten a lot of that. “Given the fact that I grew up eating whatever my brother could scrounge from a dumpster half the time, I’m absolutely certain that your food is delicious. You seem to think I’m some almighty, powerful city girl. Yeah, I grew up in a city, but I assure you there were days in my childhood when I would have given anything to have what you have here because most of you had parents who loved you, had someone besides your teenage brother who could provide for you. I had a mom who was in prison more often than not. Your food is fine. What I can’t take is the judgement that goes along with it. I’ll avoid that from now on.”
“Oh, hon,” Dixie began, her eyes going oddly soft.
But she was done for the day.
“Lila,” a deep voice called out behind her.
She ignored him and the stares of every single person in the dining room who had heard her describe her crappy childhood. That would go a long way to making them embrace her. They would likely think since her mom had been an addict that she was on drugs, too. And she’d outed her sister. God, she had no idea what her sister had said about their childhood. Remy knew, but he had a mom, sister, and brother who Lisa might not have shared her history with.
She strode toward the door and then stopped because there was the horrible sound of tires screeching, and then the ground beneath her shook as a crashing sound hit her ears. The entire café went still, trying to figure out what was going on, but Lila knew.
Car accident. She took off, pushing through the double doors.
“Lila!”
She didn’t stop, couldn’t stop. This was what she did.
She didn’t have far to go. A pickup truck had smacked against the building that housed Dixie’s café. It looked like it had struck two cars in the parking lot before it had come to rest against the solidly built brick building. That was fortunate because the other cars had slowed the truck down. What was unfortunate was the man on the ground who had apparently also slowed the truck.