“How do you know when I don’t?”
She pressed the back of her hand to her forehead where a headache started to pound. “I can’t do this right now. Not after . . . everything that’s happened today. I need time to think. I’m going to take my beer into the shower and wash this day away.”
“Take the bag of OREOs you keep in the cupboard over the oven instead of the pantry so you don’t see them when you go in there and eat them all instead of real food.”
Of course he knew that about her. He knew everything. “OREOs are real food.”
He chuckled. “I know you think that.” He paused. “I don’t want to hurt you, Liz. I don’t want to lose you either.”
“You won’t. We’ll always be friends.” She barely got those words out her choked-up throat before she hung up on whatever he might have said. Wrung out, she left the phone on the charger on the counter, grabbed the bag of cookies, and headed down the hall to her room.
Texts started dinging on her phone. One after the other as she set the cookies on the bathroom counter, stripped off her clothes, winced at the red marks marring her left shoulder, gulped a significant portion of her beer to ease the wave of anger and fear that washed through her, then popped a cookie in her mouth before she turned on the taps and stepped under the steaming spray.
She let the tears fall again, remembering Clint’s dark and angry eyes and the fear that overtook her when he didn’t let her go. If Ava hadn’t stepped in to help . . . she didn’t want to think about what Clint might have done next.
She tried to focus on Tate and the sweet, hesitant way he tried to repair their relationship. Not that it was broken. She just wanted more. And if she couldn’t have that, she wanted to find what she wanted with him with someone else who loved her like she loved Tate.
He put it out there, kind of tested the water, by telling her he wanted to try. She appreciated that he’d do that for her, but she’d come to terms with him not loving her. That’s why she’d forced herself to start dating and how she ended up with Clint.
He started out a good guy. But tonight it became clear that he wasn’t the right guy for her.
And Tate, she’d rattled him by making him think she didn’t want to be friends anymore.
Any minute, he’d come to his senses and tell her that their friendship meant everything to him and that’s all he wanted.
Her heart ached with the echo of all the other times he’d made that clear to her in so many words.
She stepped out of the shower, dried off, ate another cookie, turned off the light, listened as two more texts came in, closed her bedroom door, and crawled into bed despite not having dinner or it even being close to her bedtime.
She let the quiet punctuated by text dings surround her. She felt the aching loneliness of her home and especially her bed. She wished Tate was here to wrap his arms around her and hold her safe and loved in his arms.
Dreams.
She wished they were real and not the reality she’d lived today.
She closed her eyes and remembered the way Tate had called her his girl. After all the bad, that one thing chased away the nightmare of today and gave her some peace.
Chapter Seven
Tate hefted the last hay bale off the trailer and handed it to Declan to stack in the barn. He wasn’t sure who got the better end of the deal when he stood tall and groaned at the ache in his lower back. He jumped down. The thud of his boots hitting dirt reverberated through his knees to his back, setting off a new round of spasms.
“You’re getting old, man.” Declan smacked him on the shoulder.
“I’m two and a half years younger than you.”
“Then you’re seriously out of shape.”
Tate held up both arms and flexed his biceps. “Who’s out of shape?”
“What did Liz think of those guns?”
Tate dropped his arms. “I’m still trying to pin her down.”
“And do what to her?” The mirth in Declan’s eyes made Tate grin, but the last couple days hadn’t been at all funny.
“Shut up. You know that stuff you asked me?”
Declan raised a brow. “Yeah.”
“I thought about it. Maybe there is something there if her seeing this guy makes me want to punch him every time I see him.”
“You not liking this guy means you want to pin Liz down?”
More hard questions.
“There have been times,” he admitted. “But I always put the brakes on it because it’s Liz. Our friendship meant too much to me to mess it up. And . . .”
“And?”
“I thought she deserved better.”
Declan’s hand clamped down on his shoulder. “Tate, man, that’s not true.”
“True or not, she was always the girl who wanted a commitment.”
Declan held his hands out wide. “Doesn’t everyone?”
“I guess. When the time is right.” It had never been right for him. At least, not for long. Sure, he’d had girlfriends for months at a time, but he never lasted much past a year.
Declan pushed again. “The time hasn’t been right for you. But things change. Do you want to make a commitment to her now?”
“I see how happy Drake is with Adria.”
Declan nodded. “It’s such a huge change from how he was before he met her.”
“Exactly. I can’t remember ever seeing him that happy. And settled. Like no matter what happens, he’s good, because he’s got her.”
“You’ve always had Liz. Good times and bad, she’s always been by your side.”
“Exactly. And I don’t want to mess that up. But it’s not the same as what Drake and Adria share.”
“They have sex.” Mischief and teasing filled Declan’s eyes.
Tate rolled his. “Yes. And there’s also a closeness that bonds them.” He didn’t know how else to explain it and knew he fell short, because he didn’t know how to put his finger on that intangible but so evident thing Drake and Adria shared.
“You don’t think you have that with Liz?”
“The question is should I risk our friendship to find out? I was ready to tell her yes yesterday, but her boyfriend showed up and threw a wrench in the whole damn thing. I think something happened between them when I left.” He should have stayed to be sure nothing happened to her. It nagged at him.
“Like what? A fight?”
“He definitely wasn’t happy when I left.” Understatement of the century.
“Do you think he hurt her?”
If he did, he’s dead. “I hope she’d tell me if he did.”
“You think she would, knowing you’d hunt the guy down and beat him into the ground?”
Tate had to concede the point. “She held something back last night. She never does that. She puts it all out there. Every conversation we have is real. It’s not like that with other women. I don’t like this sudden distance between us.”
“I keep telling you to get closer to her. There’s something there, Tate, whether you want to admit it or not.”
“What if she’s built us up in her mind so much, there’s no way I can live up to it?”