Page 78 of One Last Shot

Austen

Did you see this? I’m so sorry, Boo.

Boo clicked on the link.

And then everything inside her turned to stone.

“Boo? You’re breathing funny.”

Yeah, she was. “Blake broke up with his fiancée, and according to the Instagram post Misty put up, she’s blaming me.” She flashed the post toward London, who had put the truck in Park and now took the phone. “She says it’s because he’s still in love with me. She’s calling me a marriage wrecker.”

“It has over ten thousand likes,” London said quietly. She scrolled down the comments and froze. “Uh-oh.”

It was the way she said it that made Boo go cold. “What?”

London turned the phone around. “Apparently, you and Oaken had a little food fight at the Tenderfoot tonight.” A grainy picture captured Boo in Oaken’s embrace, him trying to grab the ketchup bottle, her head back and laughing.

London clicked on the picture and thenflinched.

“What?”

“The picture has gone viral. And someone has figured out that you’re with Oaken Fox.” She turned the phone around again. “‘Boo Hoo haunts Blake Hinton while hooking up with another victim.’”

Perfect, just perfect.

“I’m sorry, Boo.”

Outside, the rain spat down on the car, the night gloomy and wretched. “Yeah, well, it was only a matter of time. Let’s just go.”

“Boo—”

“At least now I know why I got the dark eye from Grizz’s wife.” She took the phone and shoved it into her pocket. “The good news is that Huxley has finally gotten her rescue. And now, hopefully, Oaken can go back to his life.”

And maybe, somehow, she could disappear into hers.

CHAPTER 9

He should have asked Boo to wait for him.

Oaken stood in the ICU waiting room, nursing a cup of coffee as Seraphina went into the ICU with the nurse.

Boo’s expression as she’d handed over the keys haunted him. He’d said something wrong. Or maybe done something wrong. And maybe yes, Seraphina had surprised him, but only because suddenly her presence jerked him back into the world where his celebrity status mattered. Where, because of him, people got hurt.

Where he had responsibilities beyond himself.

And even as Seraphina told him the good news, all he could hear was Boo’s voice, soft, a little fragile.“Don’t hurt me.”

He couldn’t escape the idea that somehow, he already had.

Seraphina emerged from the ICU, took off her hospital mask, then motioned him over.

“They said you can say hello to him for a minute or two, but he’s weak, so...”

He nodded and took the fresh mask she offered him. Set his coffee on anearby table.

Then he followed her into the ICU. A room with curtains pulled between beds, so much equipment beeping and hissing it felt like a laboratory. The pungent smell of antiseptic tightened his gut.

A nurse stood at the end of Mike’s bed. He lay, eyes closed, his body painfully stripped of girth after over a week in the hospital. An oxygen cannula fed air into his nose, and a pulse oximeter attached to his finger, along with an IV in his arm. A sling elevated his casted leg, and his wrist also wore a cast.