He looks out at the water and seems to consider this for a long, quiet beat. “Yeah, I get that.”

There’s nothing else for me to say. “Let’s go get a fucking beer. I can fill you in on the details of the show.”

He nods, standing beside me and following me as I walk down the dock toward my truck. “Are you happy up here without her?” he asks. “You feel pretty good going home alone every night?”

Laughing humorlessly, I tell him, “Not so much.”

“You think she must be a real asshole, I guess, to try to ruin your business. What a twat.”

“Jesus, Olls, she wasn’t trying to ruin it,” I say, instinctively protective. “She was probably just trying to find a way for us—”

I stop, turning to look at Oliver’s giant shit-eating grin.

Groaning, I say, “Go fuck yourself, Aussie.”

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter FIFTEEN

Harlow

I WAKE UP TUESDAY and immediately know I’ve gotten my period, which of course brings a huge wave of relief... which of course makes me pissed-off all over again that Finn just hopped in his truck and drove north, leaving the mess between us behind.

One of the things I appreciated most about Finn was the plain assumption he seemed to always have that he sees things through with work, friends, and family. Apparently, that didn’t apply to the fight he had with the girl he’d married for twelve hours, loved for a day, and potentially knocked up.

But remembering that makes it clear why I appreciated that about him: because it’s the way I was raised, too. Take care of your own. Don’t leave loose strings. Clean up your messes. And, as my father has told me countless times, “Worrying is not preparation.”

So I drive to my parents’ house at the break of dawn to check in, reconnect, or, as Dad would probably say, be a meddling worrywart.

Dad is already up, eating cereal and staring out the window in his typical pre-coffee zombie zone, so I jog upstairs and crawl into bed with Mom. I don’t want to get so wrapped up in my own internal drama that I forget what she’s going through and that, at the end of the day every day, she’s still a mom who needs cuddles.

She hasn’t lost her hair yet, but I already mourn it. I inherited my father’s olive skin, but my mother’s auburn hair, and hers spills out over her pillowcase, just as long and full as it was when I was little. Mom’s trademark during the peak of her career was her hair. Once she even did a shampoo commercial, which Bellamy and I love to give her endless shit about because there was a lot of shine and hair flipping.

“Morning, Tulip,” she sleepy-mumbles.

“Morning, Pantene.”