Sleep was impossible. She pitched and rolled and flopped in her bed all night. Even when she did doze off, crazy, nonsensical dreams filled her thoughts.

In the morning she snuck in and out of the bathroom, then stayed in her room until she heard Duncan and Marc leave for their practice. She didn’t feel like eating, but she needed coffee. And ibuprofen. Her head felt like her scalp had been tightened. Even her eyes throbbed.

She sat at the island with her coffee, waiting for the painkillers and the caffeine to take effect, thinking about what to do. Now she wished she could move out sooner.

That sparked an idea, and she searched through the papers from the rental agency. She made a call to see if there was any possibility of moving into the apartment before the first of the month. You never knew.

This time luck was with her. The apartment was already empty. They were going to paint before she moved in. She offered to do that for them if she could move in sooner. Painting a small studio apartment couldn’t be that big a job. It would be fun. After some discussion, they agreed she could move in on the weekend. Only a couple of days away.

Thank God.

She nibbled her bottom lip, contemplating the next steps. Her things from storage weren’t due to be delivered until January second. And she had her bedroom furniture and clothes here that had to be moved. She’d thought maybe Marc and Duncan would help her, but now she didn’t want to ask them. She just wanted to disappear.

Their schedule also wouldn’t allow them to help her, as they were leaving tomorrow for back-to-back road games in Minneapolis Friday and Saturday. But in a way, that was good.

She went online to Google some things, made a few more phone calls, and when she had it all arranged, she sat on her bed. Feeling sad.

Dammit. She shouldn’t be feeling sad about leaving. She should be relieved and happy that things had all worked out so well.

She didn’t want to be there when Duncan and Marc got home. She wasn’t sure where she was going to go. Tonight was the course on matching beer with food she’d signed them up for. She considered just bailing, but then stiffened her spine. She didn’t want to miss out on something cool because of all this shit. She’d see if Jillian wanted to go with her. Jillian worked for a beer company. She’d love it.

One more phone call confirmed those arrangements, and then she dressed and did a little makeup and hair work. She slid her laptop into its case along with a file of business papers, left the condo, and searched for somewhere she could hang out that afternoon and get some work done.

A Starbucks on Illinois Street provided that solution. She could spend a few hours there, do some shopping if she needed to kill more time, and then meet Jillian at six for the beer course.

Her phone buzzed with a text message just before two o’clock. Marc. Hey where are you?

She looked at the message, then ignored it for a while. He didn’t need an immediate answer. She could be in a business meeting and not able to take calls or check messages. She ordered her second latte and continued working. Concentrating on work was just what she needed to take her mind off stuff.

An hour later she texted him back. Had work to do.

His reply came right away. R U coming home, or do U want me to meet you at beer thing?

She sighed, a weight settling on her chest, then tapped in her reply. Jillian is going to come with me to the beer thing. She likes beer.

She waited with jumpy nerves for his response; it took a while and she almost thought he wouldn’t send one. But it was just, Okay, then.

For some reason her nose started to sting and she had to blink back tears. She closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths. Well. That had been easy.

When she met Jillian at the brew pub where the course was being held, Jillian took one look at her and said, “Whoa. You look awful.”

“Thanks.”

“Are you feeling okay?”

“I have a killer headache.”

“Need something?”

“Do you have? I took some ibuprofen this morning but I forgot to bring any, and now my headache’s back.”

They quickly transferred a couple of little pills between their hands, and Lovey used the last of a bottle of water she’d purchased at Starbucks to wash it down. “There.”

She tried to focus on the course, which was really quite cool. She learned that you could think of ale as red wine and lager as white wine.

“Ales are more fruity and robust,” the instructor, a local chef, told them. “Lagers are crisper, more delicate. And as with wine, there are light, medium, and heavy bodies. Generally, light beers pair well with light dishes, and heavy beers with heavy dishes.”

They got to sample a bock beer with spicy jerk chicken and a stout with braised lamb shanks, to name only a couple of the dishes, as well as assorted cheeses paired with various beers. Lovey pasted on a smile and laughed and interacted with the other people there.

Then she had to go home. And face Marc.

Chapter 22

Marc was in a pissy mood all evening. What the fuck was Lovey doing? She’d brushed him off and took someone else to the course they’d planned to attend together. Not that he was dying to learn about matching beer with food, but she’d invited him and he’d been looking forward to it, even though he’d hesitated at first.

He played some video games, then read another book about achieving peak performance in sports, waiting for her to come home. Army—now out shopping with Melissa, the model he’d been seeing—didn’t seem too worried about Lovey.

It was nearly ten when Lovey finally walked in. Marc leaped off his bed and strode out to see her. They hadn’t talked since last night during the Duncan Disaster.

“Hey, Lovey,” he said cautiously, not sure what to expect.

She gave him a breezy smile. “Hey, you.”

A hundred questions backed up in his brain and he didn’t know what to ask. Silence stretched out between them. Finally he asked the stupidest question of all. “Why’d you take Jillian tonight? I thought we were going together.”

She sighed. “Yeah, we need to talk.” She ran her tongue over her top teeth. “Look, Marc. We were having fun. But we should never have started what we did. And I shouldn’t have invited you to something like that.”

His gut turned to rock. “What do you mean?”

“We were fooling around, having fun, keeping it secret from Duncan. He was never supposed to know about it. Now he does, he’s pissed off, you feel shitty, I feel shitty. It’s a big mess and it’s all my fault. I’m sorry. Let’s just…move on. Okay?”

No. Not fucking okay. He stared at her, every muscle in his body going rigid. Move on? What did that mean? He had a feeling it didn’t mean what he wanted it to mean.

“I’m going to bed.” She gave a weary smile. “I didn’t sleep great last night and I’ve had a headache all day.”

He watched her move past him and down the hall. His hands balled into fists. What. The. Fuck.

She was done with him. Just like that.

That was all it had been for her? Fooling around and having fun? Really?

He swallowed through a tight throat. Gave his head a shake. Then instead of standing there like an idiot, he went to his bedroom.

He tried to make sense of it. He really had thought there was more developing between them than “fooling around.” But she was dumping him. So to speak. Could you call it getting dumped when they’d never really been together?

But it had felt like they were together. Other than hiding it from Army, it had felt a lot like it. And here he’d been, trying to figure out how to tell Army so they could continue to explore whatever it was between them, out in the open and for real.