Page 2 of Tony

But I was OK with that. I was. Because I knew she’d come back. And then all the stress from the secret mission would be over, and we’d… I don’t know. Meet each other’s gaze from across a crowded room or something. And we’d both let that urge to be tear-fuck buddies take over again and… I’d get my fix.

It was a bad fantasy from the beginning because, as any addict would tell you, that fix is what fucks it all up.

Rosalinda is my drug.

I imagined we’d do that for a while. Maybe a long while. Until we got sick of each other and one of us tried to walk away. But then we’d be miserable, but unable to admit it. And spend, oh, three or four years being ‘that couple’. The ones who hate each other but can’t stop fucking.

And then…I don’t know. We’d move on, I guess. Get the therapy we so obviously needed and pull our shit together. Find new partners who didn’t come with tears, and fights, and hate sex.

Be happy for once.

But here’s the ironic part about all this—she didn’t come back.

She went home to Colorado. She went back to her new name, and her new job, and her new town, and didn’t even send me a text to say goodbye.

So… I guess I have to face the facts.

It’s not her, it’s me.

Because I just came two thousand miles, under the pretense of ‘family business,’ to stalk her. I left my boat tour business in the hands of my ridiculous brother-in-law, Jesse Boston, to be here. And ever since I arrived I’ve been sneaking around, hiding in the shadows, watching her in secret.

I’m obsessed with Rosalinda.

She has crept back into my brain and turned me inside out since she showed back up in Key West.

I need to figure out how to get rid of her. At any cost.

Because if I don’t, she is going to ruin me.

CHAPTER TWO - BELINDA

The bookstore girl has potential. She’s aloof, sketchy, suspicious, and never looks anyone in the eyes. I like all these things about her. I also like the plaid skirts and dark tights with the rips in the knees that she wore all winter. She dyes her hair blue, wears black eye makeup, and her name is Midnight. I was pretending to browse the used books when I heard a man call her that during a whisper fight. Her look is Twilight meets Reality Bites.

Midnight. The bookstore girl.

She is my last chance.

For a new best friend, that is.

My real best friend, Tara, moved down to Key West to be with her new soulmate. And now listen, I would not admit this to anyone and I will deny it to my dying breath if asked, but I was secretly hoping that whole soulmate thing with Alonzo Dumas wasn’t going to work out. I was secretly praying that Tara would be back in Fort Collins working in the library like nothing happened after she realized that Alonzo wasn’t her man.

But I’ve given up hope. Alonzo is her man. He is her soulmate and she’s not coming back. So unless I move down there, I need a new BFF.

I’m not knocking Key West. It’s a very nice place filled with very nice people, but it’s also where my ex lives. And he… just… no. We’re not doing that again. Ever. I am done with him. Because here’s the thing—he’s the reason I’m here in the first place. He was the one who got me mixed up in this stupid FBI witness protection program. That was eight years ago and let me tell you, running away from gangster-type people and leaving everything you knew behind—including your mother!—and then starting over in a strange place that is cold and snowy for half the year, that wasn’t fun.

It was torture. I was lonely, and miserable, and the only reason I didn’t fall into a serious depression was because I stumbled into the downtown tattoo shop called Sick Boyz Ink and met the men who run that place.

Actually, of the four brothers who work there, only one really mattered. Vann Vaughn. He’s the youngest. His brothers are fine—the twins Vonn and Vinn and the oldest, Vic. But it was Vann who changed my life and got me a job there working the cash register and checking people in. I worked my way up to apprentice after a while and now that place is like my second home.

Literally. Because my first home is the little apartment above the Vaughn family garage just down the street.

The Vaughn brothers are my life. And I love them. I do. They’re great. Especially Vann. He’s always on my side.

But a girl needs a real best friend. Being sorta friendly with your co-workers doesn’t count.

I’ve tried buddying up with the Vaughn sister, Veronica. But she’s already got a crew of girls and they are tight. Plus, they’re all in the motherhood stage of life. Settled with their men and houses. So they were a no go.

Then I tried to entice a few of the waitresses at the Fort Collins Theatre coffee shop into being friends, but they’re all students at the university a couple blocks down the street. Too young, too giggly, and it only took one two-minute conversation with a couple of them to realize I wouldn’t fit in. Most of the people in this part of Fort Collins are students. All they think about are tests, and Jell-O shots, and school spirit.