Unfinished Ex (Calloway Brothers, #2)(13)

I’m left standing here, feet cemented to the floor, unable to move. Unable to fucking breathe.

Someone touches my shoulder. “Jaxon,” Calista says. “Are you okay?”

Glancing around the still-silent pub, I realize all eyes are on me. You could hear a goddamn pin drop. Someone coughs. I hear a few quiet whispers. Even Lissa and Donny have stopped working momentarily. Everyone is waiting to see what I’m going to do.

I swallow. My head shakes back and forth. Finally, words come. “Please thank your parents for me. And apologize.”

“Apologize? For what?”

I step away from her and go out the front door.

I may not be wearing athletic shoes, but I run all the way home anyway. Then I throw up fried pickles and a turkey wrap all over my front hedge.

Heisman sees me through the front window and paws at it. I open the door and let him out. He joins me on the stoop, sitting next to me as I try to process what the fuck just happened.

Nicky is on television. In New York City. And she’s staying here in Calloway Creek. In a matter of ten minutes, my life has been turned upside down.

Heisman puts his head in my lap.

“I know what you’re thinking. She’s not my problem anymore.”

Without moving his head, his eyeballs look up at me.

“How in the hell did she end up on TV? She went to Oklahoma to chase tornadoes.”

I get up. Heisman sniffs around the area where I tossed up my dinner. “Back off, buddy. Go take a pee.” I get out the hose and water down the bush I yacked into, hoping the stench doesn’t get too bad.

Inside, I fight the urge to turn on the television. These weather reporters usually pop in several times during a broadcast.

“Don’t let me do it,” I say to Heisman.

I pull out my satchel of papers to be graded, pretending to concentrate on them but never getting past the first page. My phone hasn’t stopped vibrating since I left Donovan’s. I can’t deal with Calista right now. I know I’ll have to kowtow to her for weeks to get her to forgive me.

Then I hang my head and wonder if I even want her to.

I glance at my phone. Great. It’s not just her. It looks like I have texts from everyone I know and a few people I don’t. Shit. Shit. Shit. I’m never going to hear the end of this. When I go to work Monday, everyone will know. And they’ll feel sorry for me all over again. Hell, it seems like it was only yesterday when they stopped.

I go to the couch and sink into it. It makes sense now. The looks at Donovan’s. Mrs. Gregory. All those people had already seen Nicky on TV earlier. And the ones who hadn’t were as stunned as I was to see her during dinner.

I pick up the remote and turn on the television. I flip through the channels until I land on XTN, then feel relieved when I don’t see her. Maybe I was seeing things. Dreaming. Hallucinating, even. I scroll through the forty-three unread texts on my phone.

A familiar voice echoes through the room. “If you live outside the city, be prepared for an amazing sunset. This picture was sent in by a viewer. Get out of your Barcaloungers, and go check it out. If you’re in the metropolitan area, low clouds, not to mention buildings”—she snickers—“may block the view.”

A graphic appears behind her, and she goes over the weather forecast. I can’t pull my eyes away.

She’s the same, yet completely different. She was twenty-five when I last saw her. We both were. Yet she seems so much older now. Wiser. More sophisticated. Her hair isn’t as long as it used to be, but it still flows beyond her shoulders. And she seems more voluptuous. Then again, they do say the camera adds ten pounds. I wish it added a hell of a lot more than that, because no matter how much I hate to admit it, she looks amazing.

A pang of… something sits heavy in my gut.

“You,” I say to Heisman. “Why the fuck did you let me turn it on?”

He couch-crawls over and puts a paw on my leg. We both stare at the screen for the next twenty minutes, but she doesn’t come back on. I switch off the TV and grade papers for the next two hours, my poor students becoming the victim of my… what am I even feeling—unbridled rage? Because she left me? Because she went and found the career she’d always hoped for? Because she landed a meteorologist’s dream job? Because she’s back in town?

Or maybe it’s because she still has so much control over me.

That control is the very reason I haven’t been able to commit to another woman. So, yeah—it pisses me off.

My mind wanders back to when we were in school and her hold over me began. Nicky was oblivious. She thought she was a complete science nerd; that no other guys wanted her. And I was all too happy to keep it a secret that they did. All of them. Nicky was the pretty girl next door. The shy, quiet, brainy girl who turned heads without even trying. I kept waiting for someone much smarter than me to take her away from me. I couldn’t believe she was mine.

Heisman nudges my leg and lets out a soft growl, his way of telling me he needs to take a shit.

I grab my phone (only because I need a flashlight) and a poop bag. “Come on, let’s go for a walk.”

My voicemail and text messages continue to blow up. I put my phone on Do Not Disturb. Yeah, people, I get it—she’s on TV. And she’s here.

Here. At her parents’ house. Around the goddamn corner from where I’m standing.