“Ma’am?”
I gritted my teeth.
He didn’t even know who I was, but I could tell that I was familiar to him, at least somewhat.
He was studying me like he was trying to place how he knew me.
How about school from kindergarten up to my junior year. He had been two years older than me, and since the town of Gun Barrel was so small, the bus route had kids that ranged from kindergarten all the way up to seniors in high school. How about college? I knew Oklahoma State is a big campus, but he never saw me there even once? How about work? He never noticed me at all?
Dammit!
“I’m fine,” I lied.
In all honesty, I was thoroughly embarrassed.
I was also sick at heart.
I had this idea in my mind that maybe I wasn’t quite as invisible as I always felt like I was at times.
Apparently, if the football coach, who knew everybody didn’t even know me, then I was a lost cause.
I smiled.
He winced.
That’s because the movement forced the clot that had stopped the bleeding in my nose to break loose.
Blood trickled down my face.
And I decided now was the time to go.
That was when I looked down.
At my phone. In his hand.
He was holding it out to me.
I took it with shaking fingers as I placed the towel back to my face.
Then, to add insult to injury, I looked down to find my phone not only open but the book I’d been immersed in reading still up.
My cheeks flamed.
There was no way, with him holding it like he had been, that he hadn’t scanned what it was that was on the screen.
None.
And what it was, was my latest book club read, a BDSM romance that had immediately grabbed my attention. Then kept it.
Oh. Shit.
“Thank you,” I murmured, my face likely matching the blood that was probably staining my skin.
Then, I took my bloody towel, my phone, and hightailed it straight out of Target before I could do anything else stupid.
I also pretended that he didn’t see me hit the door on the way out.
Because then I might’ve just crawled into a hole and died.
• • •
“This isn’t the first time I’ve ever heard of someone getting a black eye from something pertaining to Ezra McDuff’s dick,” Camryn supplied.
I flipped her off.
“Go fuck yourself,” I grumbled. “Is it really that bad?”
She winced. “It’s not…good.”
With my pale complexion, paired with my inky black hair…I didn’t doubt that it was more than obvious that I not only had one shiner, but two.
From a box of condoms.
How does that even happen?
But I shouldn’t be surprised. Bad things happened to Raleigh Jolie Crusie. Always had. Always would.
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