Page 23 of Hogging the Hunk
“I’m a bit taken aback, yes.”
Greg shook his head and turned away from me, returning his gaze to the billboard. “I don’t understand you sometimes.”
His defensiveness was like throwing gas on the fire. “How am I the one confusing you?”
“I do something nice for you and it blows up in my face. How else am I supposed to demonstrate how I feel about you?”
I stabbed a finger at the billboard. “This was not about me. This was about satisfying your ego with a grand gesture that made it all about you.”
“Great. Yeah.” Greg slapped his legs with disgust. “That’s wonderful. I do something thoughtful and it’s thrown in my face. Why don’t you spell out what I can do to impress you next time so I don’t mess up.”
His callousness wounded me, though it was nothing new. The pattern I’d been ignoring with Greg came smashing down like an anvil dropped from the sky. Any time I didn’t laud Greg for something he did, he immediately drew out the big guns and started firing.
“All you had to do was ask me to come with you. I have the same medical training as you, and if you’ll recall, my rank at graduation was higher than yours. You seem to forget that I have just as much ambition to change the world as you do.”
Greg’s expression turned stony. “You’re blaming me for your decision to come crawling back to Button Blossom? Well, it’s not my fault. I wasn’t standing in the way of you fulfilling any of your dreams. You did that to yourself.”
My eyes swam with tears. His coldness shattered my already fragile heart into a thousand pieces, though it did nothing to extinguish the flames of fury already engulfing me. Opening the door, I stepped out. A stiff, chilly breeze whipped past me, and I was glad I had put on a thick cardigan before leaving.
The baser part of me wanted to wound Greg as much as he’d injured me. It was hopeless. When Greg was being stubborn, his skin grew thicker than a rhino’s. I took the high road instead.
I sniffled, but raised my chin. “I think I’ll walk home.”
“It’s five miles from here.”
“It’ll give me time to think.”
“Get in the car, Beckett. Let me take you to get some lunch. You know how hangry you get when you haven’t eaten.”
Another misjudgment on his part—I wasn’t angry because my stomach was empty. Why couldn’t he understand I was simmering with frustration because of him?
“No, thank you.”
“Suit yourself.” Putting the car in drive, he threw me a final look. There was no love accompanying it. “Don’t come crying when you figure out that I have your best interest at hand. I’ll be gone to Guatemala by then.”
He peeled out of the parking lot, slamming the door shut as he skidded onto the main road and sped out of town. Bitterly, I hoped Clint would catch him and give him a citation. It was the least of what Greg deserved.
“Quit crying,” I chided myself, using the sleeves of my sweater to swipe at the irritating tears that kept spilling over, no matter how hard I tried to hold them back. “You’re fine.”
With a definitive glare at the Greg hovering above me from the billboard, I turned my back on him for good and started walking. I hadn’t been lying when I told Greg five miles would give me time to think. If I didn’t keep a good clip, it’d be dinnertime before I made it back to Maren and Granny’s front porch.
Thankfully, for a Wednesday morning, the foot traffic in Button Blossom was minimal. I had to employ some ninja moves to make it past The Pale Rose, where Trixie was chatting with an older couple as she refilled their water glasses. If she’d have seen me, splotchy and red in the face from the buckets of suppressed tears I was holding inside, she would have ushered me inside and plopped a piece of sugar cream pie in front of me.
Not that I didn’t want the sugar cream pie, but I wasn’t in the mood for anyone finding out my business right then. It was going to take time to process why Greg and I weren’t meshing. The thought of letting him go completely set a lump in my throat that no amount of swallowing could make budge.
The prowling rumble of a truck coming to a crawl beside me stopped me. The passenger window rolled down, and Milo smiled at me.
Shirtless.
“You need a lift?” he asked.
For the thousandth time, I wished I had tissues on my person instead of only my sweater sleeve to sop up my face. I’d stopped crying two blocks back, but my nose continued to drip. “No, thanks.”
“Where are you heading?”
“Home.”
I should have fibbed. Milo put his truck in park and shifted in his seat. Resting his left elbow on the steering wheel, I could see every one of the muscles that comprised his torso. Holy chiseled abs. His face was not overly expressive, though I could discern that he didn’t believe that a ride wouldn’t benefit me.