Page 26 of The Lucky Heart (Jamison Valley 3)
I closed my eyes and clamped my teeth shut to keep from speaking. If I told her she was being a blind fool, she’d snap at me. If she snapped at me, she’d get mad at herself because sometime in the last sixteen years she’d gotten her head twisted right the fuck up.
She was trying to smother that spirit I adored. Did she think that her fiery personality was keeping people at arm’s length? I opened my eyes and my mouth to start the untwisting process but she was already backing away.
“I’ll see you, okay? Just think about what I said. Maisy seems like a nice girl.” She spun around and let those long legs and high heels carry her quickly down the sidewalk.
Should I catch her? Try and talk some sense into her?
No. It was pointless tonight. Felicity wouldn’t hear anything I had to say right now so I went back inside the bar.
“Is she okay?” Gigi asked.
“Yeah,” I lied. “She’s just pissed about Andrea.”
“Well, that put a damper on the evening,” Maisy said. “I’d probably better get going anyway. If I hurry home, I can say good night to Coby before he falls asleep.”
“We’re going to head home too,” Gigi said.
Maisy and I said our good-byes to the Clearys and walked to my truck. As she climbed into the passenger seat, I realized that she had spent more time in that spot than anyone else.
Almost two years ago, Maisy and Gigi had been kidnapped and nearly killed. In order for the women to escape, Maisy had been forced to kill the man that had taken her. But he hadn’t been just a random attacker. The man had been a doctor at the hospital, her ex-boyfriend and Coby’s father.
Ever since that night, Maisy had leaned on me. She’d told me once that I made her feel comfortable. We’d become good friends and I liked spending time with her. She was sweet and easygoing, but had Felicity been right? Was there more?
I turned and looked at Maisy, then dismissed the thought. She was great but she wasn’t right. The truck may have changed, but there was only one woman who had ever looked like she belonged in that seat.
“When Felicity came back for Wes’s funeral and was a bitch to Gigi, it didn’t make me like her much. Now that she’s back, I’ve been apprehensive, but Gigi’s right, she’s different. And the fact that she put Andrea in her place was, like, amazing.”
I nodded but didn’t agree. Felicity wasn’t all that different now than she was before. I had just known her better back then than she’d let anyone else know her.
“Are you ever going to tell me what’s going on between you two?” Maisy asked.
I chuckled. “Is it that obvious?”
“Probably just to me because I’m so brilliant. And I may have seen you sneak out of her motel room before Halloween. So spill. What’s going on?”
I sighed. “There’s a lot of history there. Good and bad. Lots of gaps in between. She hurt me once, but even after that, she’s always been with me. Ever since we were kids.”
“You love her.”
There was no use denying it. Maisy would see right through a lie. “Yeah.”
“Does she know?”
I scoffed. “No, she wants to be friends.”
“Then be her friend.”
“Easy as that?”
“Yep. Easy as th
at. Treat her like you treat me and she’ll have no choice but to love you.”
Her words sent my heart to my stomach. Fuck. I didn’t have feelings for Maisy but did she have them for me? Had I been leading her on all this time? It had been my idea for us to try dating but I’d also been the one to break it off. Christ, I’d only kissed her twice and both times it had felt like kissing a little sister. I’d known after two weeks that we’d never work.
“Maisy, I—”
“Don’t, Silas,” she interrupted before I could apologize. “I’m not in love with you. I just love you. I’m happy for you and sad at the same time. You’ll set off to win Felicity’s heart and that will leave me without you.”
