I turned back to the pot of water and lit the gas on the stove top. I couldn’t stand there and watch the water boil, so once I was finished, I turned back around to face her. She was wringing her hands and watching me.

Reaching over, I grabbed one of her hands to make her stop. “I meant what I said. When I act like an ass, it’s because I’m all kinds of f**ked up. You are perfect, Blythe. I swear. Stop worrying, and let’s go fix our plates. Those fajitas smell incredible.”

The tension in her shoulders eased. “Okay,” she replied, and started to walk toward the table. The she stopped and glanced back at me. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re f**ked up. I think you’re perfect too.”

So not what I needed to hear her say. She was going to kill me slowly, and I was going to let her because I wasn’t going to be able to stay away from her.

It was time I faced the facts.

I was addicted to Blythe Denton. More addicted than I’d been to anything in my life.

Chapter Ten

BLYTHE

Linc didn’t show up at work on Monday, but he did text me several times. He had to go to Mississippi for his dad for the next few days. He didn’t give me details, and I didn’t ask for any. Something about his text seemed like he was trying to avoid an explanation. Two dates and some doughnuts didn’t make me his girlfriend. I had no reason to expect an explanation.

Krit, however, did show up for dinner that evening with cheeseburgers and fries. We ate at the table like we always did, and he asked about my job and made me laugh with stories about his bandmates. I was always sad when it was time for him to leave, but I didn’t let him know.

* * *

Tuesday at eleven fifteen I pulled up to the Pickle Shack. I was incredibly nervous about eating with Krit’s sister. I had spoken to her for maybe ten minutes at Live Bay. If she started asking questions about Krit and me, I could answer truthfully, but I was afraid my pink cheeks would tell her something else.

The hope that she could be a friend and maybe my first real female friend outweighed all my other fears. I wanted to do this. I just needed to prepare myself for questions about my friendship with Krit.

Walking into the restaurant, I immediately spotted Trisha. Her blond hair and gorgeous face were hard to miss. She waved at me, and I explained to the hostess that I was meeting a friend before walking over there.

“You came,” she said, smiling brightly at me as if she thought I wouldn’t have shown up. I found it hard to believe people ever turned her down. Male or female.

“Yeah, sorry, I’m a bit late. Traffic getting out of the parking lot after class was backed up.”

She shrugged as if it was no big deal. “No worries. I just got here myself. I had to take some cupcakes to Daisy’s class. It’s her birthday today. Daisy’s my daughter,” she explained.

Trisha didn’t look older than twenty-four at the most. I couldn’t imagine how she had a child in school already.

Her smile grew, and she leaned on the table toward me. “I know what you’re thinking. Daisy is actually my youngest child,” she said with a twinkle in her eye. “Brent is ten and Jimmy is thirteen. My Daisy May turned nine today.” She paused as I let the fact she had a thirteen-year-old sink in.

“Rock and I adopted them two years ago,” she said with a happy sigh. “You met Preston Drake at Live Bay the other night. The beautiful guy with the surfer hair. Remember him?”

I nodded. That had been the guy with his arm around Amanda. He was hard to miss.

“Jimmy, Brent, and Daisy are all his younger siblings. His mother was . . . She wasn’t mentally healthy. She had some addictions, and the only reason they lasted with her as long as they did was because Preston sacrificed everything to take care of them. When his mother passed away, he was going to take them all in, but Rock and I had been trying to get pregnant, and the doctor had just recently told us it was impossible. I wanted those kids,” she said as tears welled up in her eyes. “Daisy May hadn’t even been able to talk plain back then. She had been neglected by her mother, and she clung to any attention she got from females. Now, don’t get me wrong, in her eyes Preston Drake walks on water. She loves Rock and even calls him Daddy, but he knows that Preston is her number one.” Trisha wiped at her eyes and laughed then shook her head. “Sorry. I get emotional sometimes talking about it. Especially when I realize how blessed I am to have them.”

I watched as the beautiful woman talked about these kids who had needed a mother, and I was amazed at how much she loved them. They weren’t her kids, but she loved them as if they were. I hadn’t known that was possible. I often told myself that Mrs. Williams hated me because I wasn’t hers. Because she hadn’t given birth to me. But seeing Trisha tear up talking about these kids who she obviously adored made my heart squeeze but also made me feel empty inside.

“Wow,” I managed to say. I knew I needed to say something. She had just told me a lot in the ten minutes I’d been sitting here. “That’s a really great story. Those kids are very lucky to have someone like you and your husband in their lives. Many kids don’t get that.” I stopped talking when I realized how much I was about to give away.

“Can I get y’all something to drink?” a waitress asked, interrupting my slipup. I had never been so thankful to be asked what I wanted to drink in my life. I knew that whatever I told Trisha was going to get back to Krit. As much as I wanted a female friendship, we didn’t have that yet. I wasn’t ready to trust her with my story.

“Diet Coke,” Trisha told her. “And some pickles, please. Extra ranch.”

“Sweet tea,” I replied.

The waitress turned and left, and Trisha looked back at me. “The fried pickles are amazing. You’ll love them. Anyway, enough about me. Tell me about you. All I know is you moved here for school, and my brother has taken a keen interest in you. Which never happens by the way, so you have me completely fascinated.”

I didn’t have much I could tell her about me. And I needed to clarify my relationship with her brother before she got it any more confused in her head, keeping in mind she’d repeat this conversation to Krit. I tucked some hair behind my ear as I gathered my thoughts.

“Well, I grew up in a small town in South Carolina. Extremely small. We had two traffic lights in town, if that tells you just how small. My mother died during childbirth. There were complications. She didn’t have any parents or other living family. She was an orphan and was raised in the system since she was ten. The church she attended was the largest church in town.” I paused, because honestly I didn’t know why Pastor Williams and Mrs. Williams had taken me in. They hadn’t wanted me. That much was obvious. They never said anything even remotely as touching as what Trisha had said about her kids. And they also never had kids of their own. I wasn’t sure if that was because they couldn’t or because Mrs. Williams wasn’t the motherly type.

“Um, and well, I don’t know why exactly, but the pastor at the church my mother attended and his wife took me home with them. I wasn’t adopted or anything, but they kept me and raised me.” I wasn’t going to give her any more details about that part of my life. The truth hurt, and hiding it was impossible. I was too expressive. “I wanted to go somewhere different for college and be close to the water. I hadn’t grown up near water. Pastor Williams is friends with Pastor Keenan, so he lined up a job for me here with him, and I enrolled at the local college. So that’s it,” I said, happy with my explanation and hoping she didn’t dig into it anymore.

The waitress set drinks and small round deep-fried slices of pickles down in front of us. I had never had deep-fried pickles before, and I wasn’t sure if I liked the idea of them. It seemed wrong.

“Do y’all know what you wanna eat?” the waitress asked.

I glanced down at the menu and realized I hadn’t even looked at it. “What’s good?” I asked Trisha.

“Do you eat tuna?” she asked.

I nodded. I had eaten a lot of canned tuna growing up, and I wasn’t a fan, exactly, but I didn’t want to tell her that. I liked it well enough. I’d just had too much. She gave me a reassuring smile and turned back to the waitress. “Two seared tuna paninis please. With the chips,” she said, then turned back to me. “Trust me.” She winked.

I had no idea what seared tuna was because they didn’t have that in a can. I nodded and returned Trisha’s smile. She was hard not to smile at. “Okay,” I replied.

Once the waitress walked away, Trisha turned her eyes back on me. “There are a few things that seem odd about your story, but I have the feeling you’re telling me what you feel safe telling me right now. I respect that, so I’m not going to dig. Now, tell me about you and Krit.”

She was seriously blunt. It was as scary as it was refreshing. You didn’t have to wonder what she was thinking, that was for sure. She would just tell you.

“Krit is my friend . . . ,” I began. “He has been very kind and thoughtful from day one. He makes me laugh, and he always seems to know when I need to laugh. He’s special. I don’t imagine there are many guys like him out there. I don’t have much—well, any experience really—with guys, but from what I can see, Krit isn’t like most of them. He has a really big heart, and he doesn’t seem to realize how special he is. Which makes him even more special.” I was rambling, and from the wide-eyed look on Trisha’s face, I was not doing a good job of hiding my feelings for her brother.

“Special,” she repeated slowly, as if she needed to let that word sink in. My face grew hot, and I knew my cheeks were flaming. Dang it, I sucked at this.

“I don’t think I can remember a time in my life when anyone ever called my brother special and meant it the way you just did.” The pleased look on her face made me calm down a little. Maybe she did get what I had been trying to say. He was a good friend.

“I needed a friend when I moved here, and he noticed that and filled the void. I don’t imagine most guys, especially ones who look like him, would do something like that for someone like me. He has beautiful girls on his arm all the time. They throw themselves at him. Yet he took the time to be my friend.” Much better. I felt like patting myself on the back.

Trisha stared at me as if she were trying mentally to dissect me. I decided I would take one of those pickles now, because I needed something else to think about other than Krit’s sister reading too much into my words. The last thing I needed was for her to go tell him I thought he was special.

“Can I ask you something?” she finally said, breaking the awkward silence.

I nodded, and chewed the fried pickle, which was surprisingly tasty.

“Do you really mean what you said?”

I swallowed and stared at her. Did I look like I was making it up? “Uh, yeah, I meant it. He’s—” I could not say special again. I sounded like an idiot. I needed more adjectives in my vocabulary. Well, I had more where Krit was concerned, but they weren’t safe to use around his very perceptive sister. “Krit’s wonderful. But then, you’re his sister. You know that.”

A slow smile stretched across her face. “Yeah I do,” she replied.

Before things could get any more intense and I could make an even bigger idiot of myself, the food arrived.

“Tonight we’re having a party for Daisy May at Amanda Hardy’s mother’s house. She has a pool, and Amanda wanted Daisy to have a pool party. It will be friends and family. I’d love it if you could come. Krit has a thing tonight, so he will only be stopping by to give Daisy a gift and, knowing him, grab a piece of cake. But I want you to meet everyone. My friends. Amanda will love you, and since you’re new, I know meeting people who are a part of this town would be nice.”