Landon & Shay: Part Two (L&S Duet #2)(58)

“Shay, what the hell?!” Brady asked, hurrying out from the back room, holding bags of coffee grounds in his grip. He was my manager, so it was clear this wasn’t going to go over swimmingly.

Tina finally breathed out as her body shook, and then she hurried out of the shop, dripping latte across the floor the whole way out.

Brady pulled out a mop, cleaned up the mess, called me to the back room, and proceeded to tell me I was fired.

“What?” I gasped. I mean, yes, throwing iced lattes at customers does fall under the employees behaving badly category, but she slept with my boyfriend. There had to be some kind of corporate policy to let that slide on the employee’s first offense.

“You threw a latte in her face, Shay! We can’t just let that slide,” he explained, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“It was an iced latte,” I commented, as if that made a difference. “Please, Brady, I need this job right now. I can’t afford to lose it.”

“Yeah, I get that, Shay, I do, but you made a choice, and I cannot stand by and let that kind of behavior go without drastic consequences.”

“Then suspend me from my lunch breaks. Take the latte out of my check. Just don’t fire me.”

Brady frowned, and I knew he wasn’t having an easy time with the decision at all. He was the complete opposite of confrontational, and if he could have, he would’ve rather buried his head in the sand than fire me. “I’m sorry, Shay. It’s just out of my hands now. Please don’t make this harder than it has to be.”

I parted my lips to speak, but no words came from my mouth. He was right—I’d thrown a drink into a woman’s face, and there was no getting around that fact. Truth was I deserved to be fired; I just wished Brady could’ve overlooked it all.

I took off my apron, grabbed my purse, and headed out toward the front of the shop to leave. As I began walking, Landon gathered up his things and hurried after me.

“Shay, wait up. What the hell was that about?” he asked.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I muttered, still walking toward the bus stop.

“Yeah, but are you all right? Did you just get fired for that? Also, why did you throw a drink in that girl’s f—"

“Landon,” I barked, whipping around in my sneakers to face him.

“Yes?”

My eyes watered over and my chest burned a little as he stared my way. I didn’t say a word, and I didn’t have to, because he already knew. He knew I was cracking, knew I was slipping into a moment of pain, because he knew me, even after all the time that had passed.

How was that possible?

He stepped toward me and wrapped me in his arms as I began to sob into his T-shirt. “You’re okay, Chick. You’re okay, I got you,” he soothed, smoothing his hands over my hair.

In the past week, I had caught my boyfriend cheating, slept with my ex-boyfriend, thrown an iced latte in a woman’s face, and lost my job. If that wasn’t a terrible weekly recap, I didn’t know what was.

He cleared his throat, lowered his mouth to my ear, and whispered, “We should probably move from here.” I went to raise my head from his chest, but he held me in place. What the heck? “Stay down.”

“Why?”

“There’s a bit of paparazzi surrounding us right now, and I doubt you want your face all over the magazines tomorrow. Let’s go.”

“Go? Go where?”

“Any place but here. Trust me. I got you. Just stay close and keep your head down. We have to get to my car around the corner, then we’ll be good to go.”

As Landon led me over, he wrapped his jacket around my body, keeping my face covered. The moment I got into his car, he instructed me to duck down until he drove off.

Was this what it meant being in the limelight? Never being able to break down in public without someone being there to snap a picture of you for the cover of some tacky tabloid?

As we began driving off, I realized I was sitting in the car with a man I was working hard to keep from reentering my heart, going God knows where.

“You can take me back. I’m sure it’s calmed down,” I told him.

“They like to hang around the place for a bit after a celebrity sighting takes place. We should wait about an hour or so.”

“We?” I questioned. “No offense, but I don’t really have the energy to hang out with you for an hour. You can take me to my place.”

“Are you sure you want to be alone?”

No, of course not.

Nobody wants to be alone. Some people just end up that way.

“I’ll be fine,” I answered as I went digging in my purse for my keys, but I paused as I realized they were still in my apron pocket, back at the coffee shop.

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I need my house keys. I left them at the bakery. I have to go back sooner than later.”

“Later than sooner is better,” he disagreed. “Trust me, I can take you to my place. We can stay there until things settle down. I swear, I won’t even try to talk to you.”

“Fine, but no talking once we get there.”

“Not a word.”

I shifted around in my seat and clasped my hands together. “I have wanted to ask you something since the whiskey party…”

“Anything. Go for it.”