“Well, in a manner of speaking, he’s fine,” Finn clarified.
“Is he at home?” I needed to find him. I needed to see his face, talk to him, and know that he was okay. Because I sure as hell wasn’t.
Finn shrugged. “Not sure. He called me last night asking if I could fill in today.”
I gulped. “Is that all he said?”
“More or less. My brother’s not really a ‘pass the sharing stick’ kind of guy.”
“The Liam I know is. He tells me almost everything.”
Finn’s brow arched. “Does he?”
I love you. If this ends, I’ll be broken-hearted and I’ll miss you. But I don’t need you, Chloe.
His words resonated in my mind and I squeezed my eyes shut against the echo of his voice. “Yes.”
“Well… by that logic, if he tells you everything and he wanted you to know where he was this morning, then you would know already.”
Finn’s words sliced into my core. He was right. Liam didn’t want me to find him. He didn’t want to see me.
No, that wasn’t exactly true either. He wanted me… he just didn’t need me.
Was it so bad to need another person? Every love story harps on that—you need their love to survive. Without it, you feel broken. It was the kind of classic Romeo and Juliet bullshit that great literature harped on.
“I guess so,” I whispered.
Liam was apparently fine staying away from me. But I was a disaster. A total mess without him. And like a crazy person, I was ready to tear the town apart in order to find him.
The TV in the corner of the room blasted the theme song to Bruce and Jill in the Morning. I glanced up just in time to catch their intro… and a picture of Liam and me onscreen. “What the…? Finn, turn the volume up.”
With the remote in hand, he increased the volume. “Bruce, did you see what’s happening with our good friends up in Maple Grove?”
Bruce chuckled as he brought his coffee mug to his lips. “Sure did. The ‘couple,’ ” he threw air quotes around the word, “apparently had been faking their relationship all along for the publicity!”
“Oh my God,” I whispered as raw cell phone footage of us in the food truck began playing. It was shaky and looked like one of the customers in line had turned on their phone’s video and was holding it up over the window of the truck to peek inside. It was clearly Liam and me, though, even though it was fuzzy and we kept going in and out of frame.
“And I’m fucking sick of pretending with you. I’m sick of pretending to be your boyfriend when cameras are on or people are watching, only to pretend I’m not madly in love with you behind the scenes when it’s just the two of us.”
They bleeped out the bad words and Jill gave a low whistle. “Apparently someone posted this last night to social media. She might be faking it with him, but it’s obvious that Liam Evans isn’t faking anything with her! He’s got it bad for Chloe.”
Bruce sighed and shook his head. “Poor guy. I’m sure there are plenty of women out there who are ready and willing to soothe that Beefcake’s broken heart—”
“Turn it off,” I said, tearing my eyes from the screen.
Finn muted the TV, but didn’t turn it off. “Chloe—”
I shook my head, tears burning the backs of my eyes. “Don’t. Please don’t. I need…”
What? What did I need?
Because the one person I desperately ached for, I wasn’t allowed to see.
“I need to be alone,” I said.
And for the first time… maybe in my entire life… I meant that.
37 Liam
“I take it you heard all that?” Finn hitched his thumb over his shoulder as I came out of the kitchen after Chloe left.
“Some.” Yeah, right. Like I hadn’t had my ear pressed against the door the entire time.
“What are you going to do?”
About which part? About Chloe and me? About our business we own together? Or about the fact that apparently some stupid video taken by a nosy customer had gone viral?
Viral was certainly the right word for it. Contagious. Sickening. Fast-acting… and sometimes deadly.
“I guess I’ll just… keep on,” I answered, ambiguously.
Finn snorted and shook his head. “What does that even mean?”
Hell if I knew. “It means I don’t have a lot of options. I’m not going to leave her hanging on The Dump Truck. I have an obligation to it. So does she. I’m hoping that after we take some time apart, hopefully we can coexist as business partners.”
“Really? That’s what you’re hoping this time apart will accomplish?”
No. I wanted her to see how she’d been using me all this time, even if it was unintentional. I wanted her to realize she was madly in love with me. I wanted her to learn she was strong enough on her own, but that loving me in return could enhance her already wonderful life. But that all felt so hopeless. So, instead, I swallowed down those thoughts and simply gave Finn a nod. “At a bare minimum… yes.”
With a roll of his eyes, Finn leveled me with a look that made it seem like he was the big brother; the older and wiser of the two of us. “But if you two are working together on the food truck, then that’s not exactly taking time apart, is it?”
I sighed as my attention pulled to the TV in the corner of the café. Our picture—a portrait the show had taken of us while they were here in town—was plastered on the screen. Why the hell did people care so much about two random people from a small town? My family had now been at the center of two viral stories—and I still just didn’t get it.
“You’re going to be next,” I said, angling my chin toward the TV. “Just wait. You’re going to say or do something and someone’s going to record
