Page 36

RYAN

As the dirt under my tires turns to choppy asphalt, my cell phone starts tripping over its own notifications. Each one is a work email or a phone call or a text message that I missed while I was out in the field working today.

This is my routine now. Get to the office early, switch out my personal truck for my work one, and find something – anything – to do away from the office.

Away from Marlow. I’ve issued more citations in the past two weeks than I have in my entire law enforcement career before the breakup.

I’ve also ignored more work emails than I care to admit.

By the time I’m back in the service range, it’s already late in the afternoon.

I’m exhausted, dirty, and the last thing I want to do is sit in a dark, silent office and sort out my inbox.

When the ranger station comes into view, nerves rattle in my chest. Normally, my truck is the only vehicle left in the parking lot. I plan it that way to avoid running into Marlow. But today, her little black car is still there, keeping my truck company from across the lot.

What the hell is she still doing here?

Marlow is a smart woman; there’s zero chance that she hasn’t figured out that I’ve adjusted my work schedule to give us both some space.

And fuck knows I need it. Recalibrating my feelings, as I lamely put it so long ago, would have been difficult even back then, but now it seems nearly impossible.

Running into her would be a serious setback to the small amount of progress I’ve made in getting over her.

I pat my pockets, hoping to find my personal truck keys. But I know I won’t. They’re in the top drawer of my desk, just where I always put them before I head out for the day.

The days are getting shorter now that summer is coming to an end.

A hazy evening sky is reflected in the glass doors of the ranger station as I pull them open.

The lobby is quiet and empty. As I make my way back to the offices, the clicking of fingers on a keyboard echoes down the hallway.

A couple of doors down from my closed office door, light spills out of Marlow’s office into the hallway.

As the heavy thud of my boots draws closer, the typing stops.

I stop as well, debating if I should poke my head inside her office.

Then I imagine how it would go – a couple of weak ‘heys’ followed by awkward silence.

So, I make a sharp left into my office instead, swap out my keys, and head back out.

“Ryan,” a soft voice says somewhere behind me. It’s so quiet I could almost claim to ignore it, but I don’t want to. I wish to God that I wanted to ignore it and keep walking, but my feet have already stopped moving.

When I turn around and see Marlow standing there, my chest tightens.

Her red hair is down in waves, the way she wore it to the wedding.

A hint of color is warming her cheeks. I know she hates the way her skin flushes, but I’ve always loved it.

Her emotions are buried so deep down, I like to imagine that they’re trying to fight their way out whenever she blushes.

The part of me that is trying to stay angry with her likes knowing that it embarrasses her to show her emotions so plainly on her skin.

“What are you doing here so late?” I ask.

I’m already walking toward her, unable to stop myself from needing to be closer to her.

“I’m trying to finish up all the last-minute planning for the summer barbeque,” she says softly.

“Really? I thought Hunter would scrap that whole thing now that he’s the boss.”

The summer barbeque was a relic of our previous boss, Gary. It was his way of sending off the summer interns and volunteers by showing our appreciation with an afternoon of hot dogs and bean bag toss at the park. Hunter never went. I’m surprised that he was even aware of its existence.

“He said we should keep up the tradition…but he also made it clear that he wants nothing to do with planning it.”

“Sounds about right,” I smirk half-heartedly.

Marlow offers a weak smile in return. Her delicate fingers reach up to tuck her hair behind her right ear.

My eyes trace their path, and then I catch a glimpse of her desk in the office behind her.

Flashes of the afternoon we spent having sex on that same desk play through my head.

My fingers twitch with the urge to feel all of her soft skin.

I shove the thought aside as I shove my hands into my pockets.

“Are you going?” Marlow asks.

The words and their meaning barely register in my brain, which is too busy trying to ignore all my other thoughts.

“What?” I ask a second later.

“To the barbeque? Are you going? You didn’t respond to the RSVP link in the email.”

Must be one of the hundreds of emails I’ve ignored over the past couple of weeks.

“When is it?” I ask.

“Tomorrow at noon.”

I stare down the hallway, trying to think of any reason at all why I can’t make it.

Too long goes by without an answer, but Marlow doesn’t press for one.

We both stand there silently, cautiously.

When my eyes meet hers again, Marlow’s expression is pure misery.

Her icy wall is cracking in front of me, taking me down with it.

I can’t tell if she wants me there or not, but I also can’t stand to tell her no right now.

“I’ll be there,” I finally say.

Marlow’s face lights up for the briefest moment as she nods. I should turn and leave, but the words slip out of my mouth before I can wrangle them back. “Are you doing okay, Marlow?”

She doesn’t answer right away. In fact, she barely answers at all. It’s just a minuscule nod and a tiny, unconvincing ‘yes’ spoken under her breath. She takes a step back toward her office, patching the cracks in her icy wall and retreating. I do the same.

When I get in my truck, my cell phone chimes again.

Eventually, I’ll have to deal with all the unanswered messages.

Emmett’s name pops up on the screen and I swipe up to reveal his message: Hey man, thanks for setting me up with Bonnie.

Been texting her all week. Invited her to the BBQ tomorrow so we can meet in person. Just wanted to give you a heads up.

Well, fuck. This will be interesting.

I’ve been avoiding happy hour ever since the breakup.

The last thing I need – or want – is to drown my sorrows between the legs of some woman that I couldn’t care less about.

The idea of one-night stands has lost its appeal completely ever since Marlow.

But I also needed to talk to Bonnie to make sure she didn’t have any misconceptions about me and her.

I asked her to meet me last Friday for a quick drink at a different bar.

I left out some of the details – like the fact that it was my girlfriend who overheard her saying that we were together, which subsequently caused us to break up.

That’s not on Bonnie. She doesn’t need to feel guilty or worry about what happened.

It won’t fix anything to bring her into this because the truth is that Marlow and I had issues that were way deeper than that.

Bonnie apologized over and over again. She was obviously embarrassed that someone had overheard her conversation with Eric.

Apparently, he’s been harassing her for another date ever since their terrible first date, which involved him getting sloppy drunk and trying to grope her.

The next time she saw him, she got flustered and blurted out that she was dating me to get him to leave her alone.

Understandable. And the silver lining in all of this is that her tactic seemed to work. Eric was leaving her alone now.

“Why don’t you just stop going to the Grumpy Toad?” I asked her.

Bonnie shrugged. “I don’t really know many people in town. The regulars there are the closest thing I have to friends here, I guess.”

Bonnie dipped her head, hiding the flush of her cheeks under a wall of brown curls as she took a long sip of her drink.

I’d never really given it any thought before, but now I realize that she is always there alone on Friday nights.

She always sits at the bar top where it’s easy to be lost as the crowd swells around her.

She smiles at people as they come and go around her, ordering drinks and sometimes making small talk with her while they wait. That’s how we met, as a matter of fact.

“Well, we’re friends,” I said.

Her head lifted and she smiled up at me.

“And I have another friend that I think you might hit it off with. He’s one of the rangers at the station, named Emmett. He’s a good guy. Would you mind if I gave him your number?”

“Not at all, I would love that,” Bonnie says enthusiastically.

When I gave her number to Emmett the next day, I didn’t explain the situation with Marlow. It’s not anyone else’s business anyway. But now I can see the fatal flaw in my plan. Unfortunately, it’s too late to do much about it and, frankly, I’m too exhausted by this whole thing to figure it out.