“After she saw you at the bar last night, she left town,” Ryan growls. He starts to pace, running his fingers through his hair, a sure sign of his agitation.
“Why did she leave?” I ask, my mind still foggy from sleep.
Ryan gives me a look I’ve never seen before from him, and for the first time in my life I wonder if my brother hates me. He stares pointedly at the bed, and I turn my head to see what the fuck he’s on about.
A woman.
In bed.
With me.
Fuck.
It all comes back to me.
I’d come back into town, and gone straight to the bar. Everyone had been there, the usual crowd. Mia had also been there. She’d told me, in detail, just how she and Reece hooked up.
How it happened.
Why it happened.
It seemed it hadn’t even been a one-time thing. My brother and girlfriend were having a full on affair.
And I had no fucking clue.
Then I started drinking. I glance down at the woman in my bed, wondering how the hell I'd fucked up so bad. I put my hands in my face and groan.
Summer. My beautiful Summer.
Fuck, how I’ve missed her. She didn’t deserve this shit. For the first time in a month, I begin to see things clearly. I might not be able to change the past, but I can’t keep living there. I need to live for now, for my present and my future.
Summer. I need to live for my Summer.
I stand up with renewed determination.
I gotta fix this and get my girl back.
Chapter Twenty Four
“I wasn’t the one who got us in trouble, you were!” Sandra yells, followed by giggling.
I laugh, and lean back on the log I’m sitting on. We’re sitting outside around a campfire, having a few drinks and reminiscing about old times.
“Is that how you remember it? Cos it’s not how I remember it,” I say, laughing some more.
Sandra tilts her head back, taking a huge gulp from her bottle which is still wrapped in a brown paper bag. We're so classy. Sandra’s short dark hair is tied on the top of her head, her dark eyes framed in her wide glasses.
“It’s so boring without you here,” she says, sighing.
“I wish we could see each other more often.”
“I know, I’m always bloody working,” she complains, taking another swig of wine. Sandra works as a personal assistant and is pretty much always on call.
“Your boss needs to loosen his strings,” I say, my mouth falling open when I see the look on her face. “What was that face for? What’s going on with your boss?”
She looks embarrassed. “We slept together!” she blurts out.
I still. “Sandra what are you thinking?” I scold.
“Like you can talk!”
I think it over. “Touché, Sandra, touché.”
We both start laughing again.
“Well, here’s a face I didn’t think I’d see again,” comes a sexy drawl from behind me.
I turn my head. “Quinn! How have you been?”
He looks the same as he did the last time I saw him, except for the fact that his lean, almost lanky build has filled out a little. Tallish with dark shaggy hair, piercing blue eyes and a ring through his eyebrow. Quinn is still a looker, and the boy I gave my virginity to when I was eighteen.
“Good, when did you get back into town?” he asks, kissing me on the cheek and sitting down next to me. I broke up with him a month before I left, after we’d dated for a year. We departed on good terms because I think we both knew we loved each other, but weren’t in love with each other. As cliché as that sounds, it was the truth with us.
“I kind of just spontaneously drove up here today.”
“Homesick?” he ask kindly, opening a can of beer from the esky.
“Something like that. Thought I’d go to mum’s gravestone with some flowers. And see how Sandra’s doing,” I add. “What are you doing here?”
“Sandra messaged me,” he says, looking a little sheepish.
“We’re friends, Quinn,” I tell him, wanting him to know that it’s okay for him to want to see me.
“I know,” he says, but I can tell he didn’t. He probably thought I’d be awkward about it. My phone rings with a Kings of Leon song, which is Reid’s ringtone. I press reject, and put my phone on silent. I just want to forget about him for one night, and he decides to call. This last month I would have given anything for him to call me, or reply to one of my messages, and now I just wish he'd leave me the hell alone.
“Boyfriend?” Quinn asks, a sad smile playing on his lips.
“Not exactly.”
“Complicated?”
“Isn’t it always?” I say, a little bitterly. I look around. “Where the hell did Sandra go?”