Crave (The Gibson Boys 3)

Or not.

The gravel flies behind my truck as I pull on the road.

Thirteen

Hadley

A shot of lightning catapults through the air. It illuminates the sky before a crack of thunder roars through Emily’s backyard.

“Looks like rain,” I note.

“Feels like it too. I think the temperature just dropped ten degrees.” Emily refills her wine glass with a light pink Moscato. “We’ll be switching this out for hot chocolate soon.”

“I’d take hot chocolate over that stuff now.”

“I can’t believe you don’t like wine. How are we even friends?”

I squish my nose. “Wine is so bitter. Or flat. Or … something. There’s nothing to it.”

“Ever had Moscato?” she asks.

“No. And I’m quite okay with that.”

“Your loss.” She takes a long sip before resting her head against the deck chair. “I told Josh to go fuck himself tonight.”

Twisting in my chair, I feel my eyes bug out. Her eyes close. I’m not sure if she’s in complete thought or blocking out thoughts altogether, but she seems peaceful.

“What happened?” I ask her with a heavy dose of caution. “I thought things were going great?”

“They were.”

“And then …?”

She lifts her head and looks at me. I scan her eyes for tears or a sign that she’s unsure about her decision, but there’s none of that. We could be talking about anything factual—Pilates is overrated, buttercream icing is better than whipped, or how no one really looks good in orange.

Or, apparently, how she and Josh weren’t mean to be.

“I’m so confused,” I say after a long silence.

She pulls her knees to her chest. “He never wants to do anything I want to do. It’s always about him and, to be honest, I’m sick of it.” She looks at me and makes a face. “Everything is what he wants—what we do on the weekend, where we go for dinner, how we have sex. I mean, sometimes I really want to be bent over a damn chair! Is that too much to ask?”

I know she’s being serious, but I can’t not laugh. I also can’t formulate a good response. Luckily, my reaction seems to settle her in some way because, before my chuckles end, she’s shrugging.

“Well, it’s true,” she says.

“Hey, what about that guy from the lumber yard? What was his name?” I snap my fingers. “Jeremy! What about him?”

“He’s cute, and based on the errant thing he whispered in my ear that night at Crave a couple of weeks ago, I’m one-hundred percent positive he’d bend me over a chair. But I don’t even want to think about dating again.” She sighs. “Finding a good man is like … buying an avocado.”

“Ridiculously expensive?”

“No, but that’s true too.” She laughs, pointing at me. “I was thinking more like a terrifying gamble. You can’t just go for looks because that perfect skin and amazing tan that leads you to think it’s spent the entire season getting perfectly ripe just for you may be a lie. The inside might be rotten. So you give it a little squeeze—firm, gentle pressure to kind of test the waters.” Her brows waggle. “Is it hard enough for a good time but soft enough to watch a romcom? Maybe. Or maybe it took a little blue pill and has mommy issues.”

“Dude. Stop drinking,” I tell her.

She picks up her glass and downs whatever is left in it. A burp belts through the air. “Okay.”

I don’t dignify her belch with a response. Instead, I settle back in my chair and gaze into the night sky.

If there was a way I could blink and be as flippant about relationships as Emily, I would do it in half a heartbeat. She dates men, falls in love, practically moves in with them, and then casts them away when things don’t pan out like it’s the crust on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Why can’t I do that?

Why do I have to be cursed with feelings for one boy?

“What?” Emily asks.

I turn to look at her. “What what?”

“You just groaned.”

“I did?”

“You did. And if I were your best friend who knew all your groans and snarls, I’d label this one as being rooted in Machlan.”

My head hits the back of the chair with a loud thud. “Ouch!” I rub the spot, trying to distract both myself and Emily more than massage out a knot.

“I was right. Surprise, surprise.”

My emotions well up against the dam I built inside to keep them all back. I can feel them roaring against my lips like a hurricane lashing against the shores.

Since Machlan left the apartment, my brain hasn’t left me alone. My mind doesn’t even feel like mine anymore, and that’s a tough thing to reconcile. One minute, I’m reminiscing about sweet moments with him, and the next, I’m almost in tears over others. Then everything flips again and I’m ready to kill him, and then reality hits and I feel helpless.