When my phone alarm went off, I woke up alone in my bed, which was surprising in and of itself until a second later when I remembered the large warm body that had been beside me the night before. My arm slid over to test the temperature of the sheets, and I wasn’t surprised to find them cold. But I felt the weight of a rock land in my gut all the same.

He hadn’t stayed. Of course he hadn’t.

Now I knew what it felt like when someone was more than just a Grindr hookup but still ducked out before morning. Empty and cold. Rejected in a way that fucked with my head. Because I knew we didn’t have a relationship of any kind. It was a hookup for god’s sake. Saint didn’t owe me anything.

I rubbed my face and sat up, turning to hang my legs off the edge of the bed before standing. The cool air of the room hit my bare skin, making me shiver, and just as I was getting ready to head to the bathroom to shower, the doorbell rang.

I threw on the clothes I’d grabbed and raced to answer the door. It was Dean from the auto shop. The disappointment I felt at it not being Saint returning from some rom-com jaunt to the bakery for morning-after croissants was palpable.

God, I was pathetic.

“Mr. Wilde asked me to make sure you had your vehicle back this morning, sir,” he said with a polite smile. “I figured I’d swing by and give you a ride to the garage since you’re on my way. Sorry it took so long to get you all fixed up. That first piece of window glass broke during delivery or we would have had you all fixed up in just a day. Hope you can give Spike’s Auto another chance to earn your business.”

“Certainly. I understand when things don’t go the way you want. Sometimes you just have to roll with it.”

After grabbing my phone and wallet and locking up the house, I followed him to his truck.

Rather than go back home to shower and face the bed’s rumpled evidence of the night before, I used the bathroom in the upstairs shop apartment. Once put together again, I dragged my depressed, rejected ass downstairs to the shop and tried my best to focus. My cell phone became surgically attached to my palm all day, and I was embarrassed to admit even to myself how often I checked it for a message from Saint, but there was nothing.

Finally, when I got home after seven that night, I broke down and texted him.

Was that lame? That was probably lame. I groaned and leaned back on the sofa before reaching for the TV remote and mindlessly searching through channels. What was I thinking? I didn’t want to watch TV. I didn’t want to do anything other than touch Saint’s naked body again and feel his mouth on me.

Godfuckingdammit.

My phone rang and I answered it so quickly there was startled silence on the other end. I pulled the screen back to see who it was and felt disappointment flood my system, quickly followed by guilt.

“Hi, Charlie.”

“I’m ten minutes away and craving pasta. Do you have any, or do I need to pick some up?”

“Uh… I have the stuff to make it?” What was even happening right now?

“Get on it.”

He hung up and left me staring at an empty screen. It took me a minute to get my sorry ass off the sofa and make my way to the kitchen, but I did as he’d asked and put the water on to boil before dumping a jar of sauce in a pan to heat up.

Charlie had always been friendly and open, and once I put away the confusion over the sudden self-invitation to dinner, I was kind of looking forward to the company.

When he arrived, he was all smiles, handing over a cardboard box with a six-pack of beer bottles rattling around inside.

“Thanks. I take it you’d like to have this with the pasta?”

“Hudson’s at a family do. And I’ve been meaning to come over and check in with you since the break-in. You doing all right?”

He followed me into the kitchen and took the bottle out of my hand after I popped the cap off for him.

“My car was broken into also. I’m actually starting to believe it’s my crazy family, but honestly, I don’t want to talk about it.”

I drained the noodles and added it to the pan of sauce, swirling everything together before serving it onto two plates and joining Charlie at the old wooden table that had lived in that spot for a hundred years.

While we ate, Charlie spun a tale about some tourists who’d come into the pub the day before for lunch and couldn’t stop complaining to their server about how the small-town pub was a cheap knockoff of the original.

“I finally had to go over there and put them in their place,” he said with a grin. “Fuckers. I laid the accent on thick and regaled them with tales of my dad and his dad and his dad before him growing up on that patch of Irish coastline. And how I’d personally come over to open Fig and Bramble in Hobie with my bare hands before taking ownership of it. You should have seen their faces, Augie. Priceless.”

His light spirit always managed to boost my mood.

“Thank you for coming over tonight. I needed the company,” I admitted. “I think I’ve been spending so much time on the shop, I’ve forgotten to have a life outside of work.”

Charlie shrugged. “We all do it. Owning your own business isn’t for the weak.”

That word rattled around in my head the way the beer bottles had rattled in the box. Weakness was always something I’d tried to eradicate, but the older I got, the more I realized that being strong all the time wasn’t something I was capable of. And I was so sick and tired of being disappointed in myself.

When I thought about what my dad would have told me about being strong, I realized he’d want me to be human. And humans are fallible. Maybe it was seeing Rory so happy and settled these days with Kat that had begun opening my eyes to the fact I was entering a new chapter in my life. In addition to the move and opening the shop, this past year had also included Rory’s own awakening. She was on her own now, working and living as an adult with a great job at a legal aid nonprofit and her very own life partner to take care of her. Perhaps I didn’t need to be so brave and strong for my family the way I had for the past fifteen years. Instead, maybe I could reevaluate my own life and start trying to reframe it with my own damned values instead of allowing my grandfather’s and mother’s voices in my head.

My phone’s text alert pinged, and I almost jumped out of my chair to grab the phone, bobbling it in my hands before it went skittering across the kitchen table and onto the floor.

“Fuck,” I cried, scrambling after it. When I grabbed it and swiped the screen to unlock it, I saw a text from Landen informing me that my session with Saint for the following night had been canceled and would need to be rescheduled.

My heart dropped into my stomach, and I felt my lips tighten.

So there it was.

Clearly I’d pushed Saint into doing something he didn’t want to do, and he couldn’t work with me any longer. The guy hadn’t even had the decency to contact me himself.

I took a deep breath and held it a few beats before blowing it out. My chest hurt and I felt tired all of a sudden. After powering my phone completely off and shoving it in a kitchen drawer, I returned to my seat at the table and swirled my fork through my spaghetti. There was no way I could put another bite of it past my lips. I’d completely lost my appetite.

Charlie placed a hand on my arm. “What’s going on?” he asked in his sexy lilt.

I felt my eyes prickle and clenched my jaw to force the emotion away before speaking.

“I met someone,” I said. And it came out sounding like the worst news ever. Because it was.

“Holy shit, Augie. That’s fantastic.”

I rolled my eyes at him before shaking my head.

“Okay. It’s not fantastic,” he said with a laugh. A beat later he softened his voice. “Who is it?”

Suddenly the tears sprang past my defenses, and I was powerless to stop them.

“It’s Saint,” I said in a choked whisper.

“Och, sweetie.” Charlie pulled me into a comforting hug.

Thank goodness he was so kind and affectionate. It felt good to be babied for a minute.

“You’re not the only one to find himself under the Wilde spell,” he said after a while, pulling back with a knowing smile. “Let’s open another beer, and then you can tell me all about it.”

So I did. And then I told him why none of it mattered anyway. Since I’d fucked it all up.