Chapter Thirty-Three

Alex

Three days. It had been three days, and I still felt like my heart was being scooped out of my chest with a dull knife. Shouldn’t this sick, shattered feeling be abating?

“So, what’s the verdict?” Melissa bounced on the balls of her feet and looked over at me like a kid on Christmas morning. I gave her a weak thumbs up.

We stood to the side of the bottling room and watched Warner and Joe settle into a new rhythm with the upgraded bottling system. It had finally arrived yesterday, and the crew had spent the whole day getting it installed and ready.

Warner hit a red button on the side of the machine to halt all the moving belts. “This thing is frickin’ amazing.”

Joe wiped his hands on his jeans and came over with a big, goofy grin on his face. “I’m with Warner on this one. We’ve got triple our old capacity, not to mention we won’t have to shut down every couple of hours to unjam the whole thing. You’re going to need to get us some more sales venues.”

I glanced down at my clipboard. Three candidates were still in the running to take over the sales manager position, but I hadn’t been able to settle on any of them. Who could I trust to launch Naked Brews into a new tier? Not that I was the best judge of character these days. I’d really missed the mark with Damian.

Melissa grabbed my shoulders and guided me back toward the break room. “We’ll leave you guys to it. For now, we need to get caught back up on the orders we do have.”

She marched me back into the Brew Pub before spinning me around to face her. “What is going on with you? You’ve been moping around for the past three days, but you need to snap out of it. Lake and Walsh will be here any minute.” She set her hands on her hips. “Does this have anything to do with why Damian hasn’t been here all week? I know I’ve been preoccupied with the grand opening coming up, but don’t think I haven’t noticed your personal pity party.”

“It’s not a pity party.” I tapped my clipboard with my nails. “I’ve been busy, too.”

“Fine, liar, don’t tell me. Just...try to fake it for Lake. She’s going to be stressed enough as it is with the opening happening in four days. Let’s not insert more drama.”

“Trust me. The drama is over. Completely, one hundred percent done.”

“What the hell, Alex?” Lake stood in the doorway, framed by sunlight streaming in from outside the bar.

“Lake.” Melissa and I ran over to hug her.

She stopped us with her infamous, death-star glare. “Don’t Lake me,” she said, her arms crossed over her chest. “What the hell is going on around here?”

I gave her shoulder a light punch. “Aren’t honeymoons supposed to be relaxing?”

“My honeymoon was amazing.” She uncrossed her arms and wrapped Melissa in a huge hug. “Thank you, thank you, thank you. Everything was perfect, and there’s no way I could have planned a trip like that on my own. You’re the best.”

I opened my arms. “Me next.”

“I ought to slap you instead.” Lake turned to me and gave me a good squeeze before stepping back and narrowing her eyes. “What did you do to Damian?”

I held my hands to my chest. Even hearing his name hurt. “What makes you think I did anything to him?”

Lake pulled out her phone and flashed the screen at us. “We weren’t even off the plane when Walsh and I got a text from him. He’s leaving tomorrow and won’t be here for the grand opening. He said he needs to take care of some business in Denver, but that’s a crock of shit.”

Leaving. Tomorrow. I should be glad he wouldn’t be here to distract me, but I wasn’t. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t think straight. In fact, I was pretty sure I might actually be dying. Was it possible to die from heartache?

“Yeah.” Lake pointed at my face. “That look right there. That tells me you know exactly why Damian is bailing early. I thought you were going to help him out around here.”

“I did.” I fell into one of the pub chairs and let my head flop back. “I showed him the ropes, introduced him to everyone, and even got him to go out in public with me.”

Lake sat down next to me, her eyes wide with shock. “You got Damian to go out on a date?”

“Yeah.” My voice came out in a whisper as I remembered the night we held hands, watching a cheesy cheerleading movie. The night a little girl with one eye told him not to hide his sparkle. My eyes filled with tears, and my breath hitched on a little sob that I couldn’t hold in.

“Oh dear.” Melissa sat on the other side of me and laid a soft hand on mine. “How did I miss this?”

“Miss what?” I asked the ceiling, trying and failing to hide my misery.

“You falling in love.”

I sat up and narrowed my eyes at Melissa, whipping my hand out from under hers. “No. Damian is a selfish, egotistical, opportunistic, class-A jackass.”

“No way.” Lake leaned against the arm of her chair. “I haven’t known Damian very long, but Walsh talks about the guy like he’s Superman and Captain America wrapped up in an Ironman suit.”

“Oh,” Melissa said, her eyes glazing over. “He’s got a total Robert Downey, Jr. vibe going on.”

“Hello.” I snapped my fingers in front of her face. “Focus. Damian the soldier might be a hero, but Damian the person is a jerk. He threatened to make up a juicy gossip story about me and send it to the tabloids.” It still felt like he’d physically punched me in the stomach when I thought about that.

“What!” Lake jumped out of her chair and whipped her phone out of her pocket. “No one threatens my girls like that, American hero or not. Wait until I talk to Walsh.”

“No, don’t call Walsh.” I pulled her phone away and set it on the table, my head suddenly heavy from exhaustion. “I don’t think he’s actually going to call the tabloids.”

Though he could. My head collapsed against my arms on the table.

“Alex.” Lake’s voice was soft and gentle, the opposite of when she first walked in. “What is going on with you two?”

I sniffled into my arm, failing to hold back the tears that made it impossible to hide everything going on in my chest. “I fucked up. I don’t do relationships, you know that. I don’t even know how, and Damian...well, he does, even if he is rusty. And now he thinks I’m some kind of serial whore, and I said some pretty awful things to him, namely that he’s dead inside, and I never wanted to see him again.”

Two sets of warm arms wrapped around my back as Lake and Melissa cocooned me in a group hug.

Lake leaned closer and whispered in my ear, “Maybe if you just went and talked to him...”

I sat up and wiped at my leaking eyes. “No. We’re past that. Besides, it’s better this way.” The one thing I could be thankful for was that no one knew how deep I’d gotten, how close I’d been to handing him my heart. No one knew but his mom and me, and I knew she wouldn’t say anything. “I don’t do love and marriage and long-term anything. It was never going to work, so it’s better that we end everything now.”

“Okay,” Lake said, pulling her arms tighter. “Okay.”

Except nothing about this was okay. This was exactly why I didn’t do the whole love and marriage part.

Because heartbreak sucked.