“I won’t be far. I might be old, boy, and sick, but I’m not afraid to kick your ass.” My dad pointed a finger at Easton, and I bit back a smile.
“Come on there, Mr. Nightingale, let’s take a walk, you and I.” Ethan slapped my dad’s back and turned him around. They slowly started walking in the other direction, then paused a few feet away. I heard Ethan start talking about what kind of drywall they should use for their project, and I gave Easton my attention again.
God.
He was achingly beautiful. It hurt to look at someone so damn good looking knowing they knew it.
His lashes curled up and fanned out
, enhancing his eyes even more. Every girl in the world would be envious of those lashes. It just wasn’t fair. Easton had dark hair, but the skater-boy swoop was long gone, and now he wore it short on the sides and just a little longer on top. He grew taller, broader, his muscles were thicker, and on his fleece jacket, I noticed a fire department symbol.
Of course he was a firefighter.
Hot and worked a dangerous job? What the actual fuck?
For some reason, that only made me angrier.
My eyes danced over his face then dropped to his chin. Like all his brothers, there it was, that damn dimple. He was clean-shaven at the moment and looked a few years younger than he really was. His cheekbones were chiseled, and his nose looked like it had been broken and reset once or twice. It wasn’t crooked, but the shape was different.
It added to his appeal.
This was a losing battle. Here I am, in jeans and a t-shirt, no makeup, and I didn’t brush my hair.
The one time I said, ‘no, it will be a quick trip to town. What are the chances of me actually seeing anybody?’ and of course, I see the somebody I hoped not to see.
“What do you want, Easton?” I asked, my voice less bitter than I thought it would be. I had thought of this scenario going down a hundred different ways but in the middle of the paint aisle at Lowe’s? Well, that wasn’t one of them.
In all the scenarios, I slapped him, screamed, cried, and told him I hated him. I wanted to see him hurt how he hurt me, but right now, I didn’t feel that.
I felt withdrawn, tired, and just ready to let it all go. I didn’t want to be his friend, and I wouldn’t be his foe. We would just be people that we used to know. That was it.
“Luna,” he said, and my body shivered. I hadn’t heard him speak it in so long and it sounded so different now. A man was saying it, and I hated that my body reacted. “I’ve been trying to get a hold of you. I asked your parents about you, about calling you, but that didn’t go over to well,” he cleared his throat and shuffled his feet.
“Damn right it didn’t,” my dad yelled from behind me. Of course he wouldn’t wander too far, the man was nosey. He wanted to know everything that was happening.
“I didn’t know that,” I said because I told my parents not to tell me anything that dealt with Easton unless he died. They held to their promises. “Why were you looking for me?” I crossed my arms, clearly defensive.
“I want to clear the air. I want to talk. You aren’t in any phonebook, or on social media, and I couldn’t even find your address. Can we have coffee or something? There’s a lot I want to say.” He scratched his head and cleared his throat again like he had something caught in it.
Yeah, probably a tumbleweed full of damn lies.
“No, Easton. Whatever you have to say can happen here. There won’t be coffee; there won’t be a next time. This is it. After this, we are nothing but each other’s pasts.” Even as I said the words, I hated how the sounded, how they tasted, how they felt, because even now, while looking at Easton, he had my heart.
And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get it back, no matter how much I wanted to hate him.
His face pinched with pain, brows drawn in a frown as he took a step towards me, but I jumped a step back. I didn’t want him near me. I wasn’t afraid he’d hurt me, but I was afraid if I felt his warmth, smelled his scent, touched his skin, I’d break.
I’d give in.
I’d be whatever he wanted me to be, and I didn’t want that for myself. I wanted more. I wasn’t his steppingstone, his mat to walk all over, some girl he could keep as a backup. I deserved better.
“Don’t,” I whispered, holding up at hand. “Don’t come near me.”
“Luna.” My name sounded broken on his tongue. I was hurting him.
And it surprisingly didn’t feel as good as I thought it would.
“Luna, I miss you. I miss our friendship. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything, for what I said, for what I did, for how I treated you. It wasn’t right, and I felt horrible about it from the moment it happened.”