Page 71 of She's Like the Wind

Lipstick faded. Curls pinned. Eyes tired but still hopeful.

I didn’t look unhappy. I just looked…in between.

Gage looked like that, as well.

What are you doing, Naomi?

I don’t know.

My phone beeped with a message from Aurelie:Your man looks like someone kicked his puppy. But we’re taking care of him.

She’d taken a photograph of her and a few others sitting around a table with burgers. They were at Marie’s down the street on Burgundy. After R-Bar, that was one of Aurelie’s haunts—especially when she was in need of a smash burger.

I could just leave here, and within five minutes, I’d be withmy people. With Gage.

I couldn’t lie to myself, but I had hoped that I’d feel something for Jonah—something that would take this pain of losing Gage away.

I may not know what I wanted to do about the 180 Gage had done—but I did know one thing, I wouldn’t fill the silence in my heart with someone else’s voice just to quiet the unease and the ache.

I wouldn’t try on someone else’s version of love to seeif it fit.

I wouldn’t have a fling with Jonah.

Then what are you going to do about Gage?

I have absolutely no idea.

CHAPTER 25

Gage

Ineeded a damn drink.

We’d finished up a long day restoring the rear galleries of a Victorian double off Burgundy—hand-sanding shutters and repointing mortar on a wall that looked like it’d survived two centuries of hurricanes, termites, and men with more ego than skill.

My hands were raw, and usually working like that meant my mind was quiet—but since I’d seen Naomi with Jonah at the Marigny Opera House, my mind was a fucking wasteland.

I’d gone to the trunk show on Saturday, the day after the runway. Naomi had been pleasant and distant. It had been so bad that even Kadisha felt bad for me, and she usually wanted to chop my balls off for hurting her favorite person in the world.

The good news was that Jonah hadn’t been there.

I hadn’t been able to see her on Sunday, as I had made plans to go fishing with my father.

We spent a quiet day out in Hopedale, where the marsh met the sky and the only sound was the lazy lap of water against the boat and the occasional birdcall slicing through the stillness.

We didn’t talk much. That wasn’t the point.

We baited our lines, cast into the calm, brackish water, and let the silence do what it did best—hold space for whatever couldn’t be said out loud.

The sun rose slow and hazy over the reeds. We caught a few redfish, a couple of specks.

We cooked them at home, blackened on the cast iron, simple, buttery, lemon-slick.

It should’ve been peaceful. It was, in every way that counted.

Except I was still fucked up over Naomi.

“You look like someone killed your dog,” Delphi announced as he handed me a beer and took a seat across from me.