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I woke with a start and sat up, heart hammering. Full daylight streamed through the window across the room as if the thunderstorm had been a hallucination. I’m late.

No—it was Sunday. I heaved a relieved sigh and then listened for Boyce’s presence outside the bedroom, but every sound I detected originated outside—the squawk of seagulls scavenging a few blocks from the beach, the hum of a car passing on the street, the low horn of a tanker or cruise ship out in the gulf. I was alone.

I pulled the sheet back, revealing my bare legs below the worn T-shirt twisted around my torso. Scooting to the edge of the bed, I realized I was a bit sore. It had been five months since I’d broken up with Mitchell. Returning to my comfort zone after the breakup, I’d thrown my full concentration into academics and earned a 4.0 in my final, most challenging semester. I’d had little to no social life outside the Chi-O house. Attending compulsory spring events with guys who were friends, I declined any actual dates and sidestepped hookups, preferring the use of my hand and my imagination as a sexual partner. No misunderstandings, no complications.

Little wonder I’d responded so forcefully to Boyce’s skillful attention last night. Oh my stars. I’d never, ever nearly cried during sex… except for the first time—also with Boyce—but that was due to pain, not ecstasy. I’d always thought It hurts so good was a silly expression, a fictional ideal.

Wrong.

My shorts were folded on the night table, next to a note scribbled on the back of a list of auto parts.

Gone fishin’ (always wanted to write that to somebody). Back around 11. Brit is bringing her truck by late morning but she’s supposed to text me first so she shouldn’t bother you. BTW - she says her aunt needs a front desk person at the inn on Cotter. She told her about you. Sounded like you could show up and it’s yours, if you’re interested.

B.

Boyce had left me a note to tell me where he was and when he’d be back… but Brittney Loper was bringing her truck by, despite her supposed lack of influence over his Sundays. I fought back the surge of jealousy that made my eyes burn. Boyce wasn’t mine. We’d slept together last night, but that didn’t mean he belonged to me.

Brit had been friendly yesterday and had possibly arranged for me to land a job at an inn. After my initial job-search failure, I wasn’t willing to look that gift horse in the mouth.

I grabbed my shorts and the note and went to shower. When I got out there were two messages and a pic on my phone—from Mitchell. I tapped Edit and my thumb hovered over Delete, but I couldn’t do it. My curiosity got the best of me. I wanted to know what the hell he had to say.

Mitchell:  I got an apartment in the Hillsboro West End area. It’s biking distance from campus on nice days. I think you’d like it. The pic is the view from the patio.

Mitchell:  Anyway. I wanted to apologize one more time. I know you deleted my messages after we broke up instead of reading or listening to them, and I don’t blame you. I was such a jerk. I guess I’m just hoping you read this. I’m so sorry, Pearl.

“Be sorry, asshole,” I muttered. So much had happened in the past five months. So much had happened in the past twelve hours. Mitchell didn’t deserve to know any of it. He didn’t deserve an I forgive you… even though I’d reneged on all our plans and didn’t tell him until I had to.

I didn’t regret my decision, but if I’d just told him about it earlier, I could have avoided these pangs of conscience. I closed the message without answering or deleting it, unsure which to do. No rush, either way. Besides, I had a job to land.

Brittney Loper’s words reverberated in my head and I wondered what had made her think them. If you wanted Boyce, you could land him. I didn’t want him to just want me in his bed. To manipulate him into promises or arrangements because of that want. I wanted him to love me like I loved him. I wanted to be his only. But no one had ever been Boyce Wynn’s only, and I wasn’t foolish enough to view that as some sort of challenge. He wanted me sexually, yes. But interpreting desire as proof of love produced a counterfeit result, born of immeasurable evidence and hidden formulation and a vague hypothesis with no falsifiable alternative.

He was a magnet and I was a magnetized entity. One week was all it took to submit to the magnetic field that trailer had become, and there were nine weeks to go. The only question was whether his undivided attraction would last the whole nine weeks—whether my heart would be shattered before the time was up or I would shoulder the pretense of being the one who left, my dignity intact, outwardly.

I had what in science is known as a hindsight bias. When it was over I would say I had known all along how it would end, because I’d been here before. It could be argued that I would influence the result—that my wrecked heart would be a self-fulfilling prophecy—but I couldn’t see how that mattered one way or the other. And that’s when I knew how far gone I was.

Chapter Eighteen

Boyce

Sunday afternoon I’d sent Brit packing with balanced tires and orders to get a new set as soon as she could afford them when Pearl texted me. She not only got the job, they wanted her to start right away. Aunt Minnie—who was about a hundred—had taken a spill over Katy Perry, the inn’s reception dog, and fractured her femur one week before her knocked-up front-desk girl got put on bed rest.

If I were Pearl, I’d have thought long and hard about the bad luck making the rounds there before signing on, but she’d always been a logical sort of girl. Luck one way or the other wouldn’t faze her because she’d never believed in it.

She came home around ten thirty, tiptoeing through the trailer for no good reason because I was wide-awake, staring at the ceiling and praying for a gully washer despite the fact that there was a two percent chance of rain and not a cloud in the goddamned sky. She fell asleep on the sofa while I tossed and turned and cursed the fact that my pillow still smelled like her.

Sam showed up Monday morning, full of beans because she’d survived her trial period and was now a bona fide employee. We were working on a routine brake job under the lift I’d set low so she could see and reach everything. I pulled my weight bench over so I didn’t have to squat. I’d never worked on an underbody while seated, but it was damned sight more uncomfortable than I’d have thought.

“You were in the Marines?” she asked, all offhand like she thought I’d start spilling war stories if she was sneaky enough. Since I’d rolled the sleeves of my T-shirt to my shoulders, she had stolen several veiled peeks at my tat, not near as wily as she thought she was.