Page 26 of 10 Rings I Hate About You
Which somehow made it worse. I didn’t want his pity. I wanted …
I shoved that thought from my mind before it could fully form.
“I won’t, either,” I responded, my voice tight. “But I need you to understand ...”
He waited. Silent. Still.
“This isn’t just a fundraiser,” I said. “This is my chance to really become a part of this town. And I won’t have it turned into a checklist or become something without emotion or feeling.”
He flinched.
For a moment, I thought he might argue.
Instead, he surprised me and gave a short nod. “Fine.”
Fine?
He handed me the paper, and his neat block-style handwriting stared back at me. His letters were careful, steady. The paper was warm from being in his pocket. “Look it over. We can talk tomorrow.”
Then he turned and walked away. No goodbye. No telling me when we should meet. No warmth.
And for some reason, that disappointed me the most.
I stood there long after he disappeared into the shadows beyond the streetlight, his footsteps fading into the night. My gaze landed on the words on the page, but not really seeing them. The lists. The bullet points. The rational, reasonable Marc-ness of it all.
The headlights blinked from Adele’s car, snapping me out of the trance I was in.
I glanced at the list of rules again and swallowed hard.
If this went wrong, I was so screwed.
I wasn’t sure if Marc Kingsley was going to help me … or destroy me.
The town was the one who had decided to go through with this.
And now so had I.
I folded Marc’s list carefully, creasing it along the folds he’d already made, and tucked it into my purse. Tomorrow, I’d look at it properly. Tomorrow, I’d figure out how to turn his rigid structure and my desperate need to belong into something that might work.
Tomorrow, I’d have to see him again.
The thought shouldn’t have made my stomach flip the way it did.
Adele’s headlights flashed again. I straightened my shoulders, lifted my chin, and walked toward the car.
One step at a time. That’s all I needed to focus on.
One terrifying, possibly disastrous step at a time.
Chapter Five
MARC
As I unlocked the front door of my clinic, the morning sun sparkled off the windows facing Main Street. It was only 7:30 a.m. and I was already exhausted. The town hall meeting last night—and my confrontation with Delaney—had played on a loop in my head until I’d fallen into an uneasy sleep around three in the morning. Getting up at 6:00 a.m. to run my daily five miles was torture, and it didn’t help that with every mile I continued to relive last night.
Everything felt different. Like standing on a half-frozen lake, waiting for the ice to crack.
Although, nothing hadtechnicallychanged. My world still ran on appointment reminders and routine checkups. The air still smelled like disinfectant and the weird herbal cleaner Jane insisted made the place “welcoming.”
