“And we won’t discuss Cooper unless you want to,” Alana promises. “Although for what it’s worth, he’s pretty torn up about everything. Evan says he sat on the beach all night in the cold, just staring at the bay.”
“Am I supposed to feel sorry for him?” I ask with a raised brow.
Steph laughs awkwardly. “Well, no, and we’re not saying you don’t deserve to be pissed. I’d have complete sympathy if you wanted to torch his truck.”
“The whole revenge plan was juvenile bullshit,” adds Alana. “But he wasn’t faking liking you. We told him he wasn’t allowed to pretend to fall for you, so that part was completely real.”
“And he is sorry,” Steph says. “He knows he messed up.”
I wait a few seconds, but it seems they’ve wrapped up their pitch. Good. Now we can set some boundaries.
“I get that you two are stuck in the middle of this and that sucks,” I tell the girls. “So how about we set a house rule: I won’t get weird every time someone mentions his name or bitch about him in front of you, and you guys agree not to campaign for him. Deal?”
Steph gives me a sad smile. “Deal.”
That night, I allow myself to cry alone in the dark. To feel the pain and anger. Let it rip me open. And then I put it away, bury it deep. I wake up in the morning and I remind myself that there’s a lot more to my life than Cooper Hartley. For the last year, I’ve complained about all the things keeping me from concentrating on my business. Well, there’s nothing stopping me now. I’ve got time in the day and more than enough work between my websites and the hotel to fill it. Time to wipe up my smudged mascara and be a bad bitch.
Fuck love. Build the empire.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
COOPER
“Hey, Coop, you in here?”
“Back here.”
Heidi finds me in my workshop, where I’ve been holed up for the past six hours. Orders keep pouring in for new furniture pieces via the website Mac had set up for me. She’d asked someone who worked on her apps to design it, and one of her marketing people created an advertising account for my Facebook business page too. Just another way she’d changed my life for the better. The orders are coming almost faster than I can fill them, so every second I’m not on one of Levi’s jobsites, I’m in here busting my ass to push out new work. Can’t say I mind the distraction. It’s either keep myself occupied, or wallow in self-destructive misery.
My head jerks up in a quick nod of greeting. I have a raw piece of oak from a fallen tree that I’m chiseling into a chair leg. The repetitive motions—long, smooth strokes—are all that keep me sane these days.
“Why does your porch look like a funeral home?” Heidi says as she hops on my worktable.
“Mac. She keeps sending my gifts back.”
For two weeks now, I’ve tried sending flowers, baskets. All kinds of shit. Every day, they end up on my front porch instead.
Initially, I was sending them to the hotel, knowing she was out there daily checking on the work Levi has one of his crews starting on. But then I wore Steph down and she told me Mac is staying with her and Alana. I thought for sure I’d at least get one of them to accept delivery. No such luck.
The intensity with which this chick refuses to let me apologize is fucking ridiculous. She even took our dog. I still wake up in the middle of the night thinking I hear Daisy barking. I’ll roll over and ask Mac if she’s taken her out, only to realize neither of them are there.
I miss my girls, damn it. I’m losing my mind.
“Guess that answers the question of where you two stand.” Heidi draws a sad face in the fine yellow dust. “Not for nothing, but I told—”
“I swear to God, Heidi, you finish that sentence and I better never see your face here again.”
“Whoa, what the hell, Coop?”
I put too much force behind the chisel and crack the wood. A huge gash opens down the middle of the chair leg. Dammit. The chisel flies out of my hand and pings off the floor somewhere across the garage.
“You got exactly what you wanted, right, Heidi? Mac won’t talk to me. And now, what, you’ve come to gloat? Fucking spare me.”
“You think I did this to you?”
“I know you did.”
“God, Cooper, you are such an ass.” Cheeks stained red with anger, Heidi throws a handful of sawdust in my face.
“Motherfucker,” I curse. There’s sawdust in my mouth and up my nose.
Muttering under my breath, I douse my head with a bottle of water and spit up tiny splinters on the concrete floor. My wary gaze tracks Heidi’s pissed off movements as she starts pacing the garage.