Instead, I feel like an absolute heel.
I like Zen, even if they’re not telling me all the secrets.
And now they don’t trust me.
Getting off work half an hour later doesn’t help, because getting off work means I need to do something else that twists my stomach in knots.
Just before I clock out for the day, I whip up a special salted caramel hot chocolate in a to-go mug and pay for it and three chocolate croissants. Then it’s off to pick up Jitter and drop into Sir Pretzelot.
If I’m doing this, I’m bringing everyone’s favorite buffer.
Emma’s office is in a complex up the mountain from the historic district of the Tooth where my dentist and eye doctor also have space. When Jitter and I arrive at her building, we make our way to her second-floor unit. Despite it being Saturday, the door opens easily when I turn the knob.
Theo’s right. She’s burying herself in work.
“Hello?” I call softly.
Em’s a one-woman show, so she doesn’t have a receptionist, though her accounting practice has grown enough that she should probably consider it soon. I hear the wheels on her desk chair squeak before she appears through the half-closed inner office door.
She’s in a black cardigan with her blonde hair tucked up in a pencil bun, and her brown eyes are lacking their normal bright cheer. Instead, she’s sporting bags beneath her lower eyelids, and her cheeks look even thinner than usual.
My heart twists.
She’s struggled to keep weight on her entire life, and this isn’t helping.
“Hey.” I lift both bakery bags and the largest reusable to-go mug that Bean & Nugget sells. “Just dropping off tax season treats.”
She eyes the food, then forces a smile. “Thanks. I’m a little tied up. Do you mind leaving it on the desk out there?”
“Only if you promise you’ll eat some of it.” Jitter strains on his leash, but I hold him tight, and no, I’m not entirely sure how I’m balancing everything. “Sit, Jitter.”
“I’ll eat something,” Emma says. “Thank you.”
She scoots her chair back to her desk and out of view.
My throat burns. “I’m really sorry, Em,” I say quietly. “I’m here if you need anything.”
“I know,” comes back just as softly. “Thank you.”
She doesn’t say anything else, and I don’t know what else to say either, so I leave the hot chocolate and the pastries on the desk in her entryway, then pull Jitter back outside to the parking lot packed with snow.
I don’t want to go home—it’s too close to Grey and all of my complicated feelings about him, even if he’s not there right now—so instead, I take Jitter to a local park. I strap on the snowshoes and leg gaiters that I keep in my trunk this time of year, and my puppers and I head out into the wilderness, following my favorite trail.
I’m not a hundred yards from the parking lot, though, before I hear a noise behind me that will always make me turn around.
It’s the distinctive urp! of someone slipping on the path.
“Are you okay?” comes out of my mouth before I fully process what I’m seeing.
Grey is picking himself up out of a snowbank beside the snow-packed trail.
Jitter lunges with a happy bark, his back end wagging ferociously, and he almost pulls me over despite the extra traction provided by my snowshoes. “Slow, Jitter.”
He listens as well as a mountain lion chasing an elk would to the same command.
“I meant to do that,” Grey says as he makes it all the way to his feet.
He slips on the packed-snow path but catches himself this time.
I squeeze my eyes shut and count to five.
When I open them again, he’s still standing there.
Watching me.
Shit shit shit.
Does he know I called his grandmother and he’s pretending like he doesn’t? Did he tell Zen to lie?
Is he here so that he can shove me off a cliff and pretend it was an accident?
He doesn’t really strike me as the type, but then, I never thought I’d be the type to call a man’s grandmother to tattle on him for buying my family’s café either.
Not that that was my only purpose in calling.
But it was a major part.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Wow. Is that your suspicious face?”
It’s the smirk that does me in.
How he pulls off a self-deprecating smirk that also says I like your suspicious face is beyond me, but I get a little warm glow in my chest all because of that smirk. “This is my concerned face. A beach bum who’s constantly wrapped in seventeen layers to stay warm, who has dizzy spells, and who isn’t wearing spikes on a snow trail is always concern for us locals.”