Free Jilted in January by Clarice Wynter Page B

glanced at Harper, a question in his eyes. Should he leave? She didn’t want him to, but she also didn’t need him here to defend her.
    “Oh, so I guess it’s all my fault , then? I threw you two together?”
    “Brad, I thought we’d been through this. It’s not going to work with us. Grant was just leaving , and I think you should too.”
    “So that’s it. You’re just going to walk away and not give me any chance to talk about what happened?”
    Harper’s face had heated to the boiling point. Despite the frigid air sweeping in from outside, her blood was sizzling and not in a good way. She shoved the bagels back into Brad’s gloved hands. “Let’s get one thing straight, Brad. Stop saying ‘what happened.’ It didn’t ‘happen’—you caused it. You walking out on me was not something that just occurred out of the blue like a thunderstorm or a car crash. You made it happen. Let’s use the real words and call it what you did . And I gave you a chance to explain, and you know what? I don’t care about the explanation. It doesn’t matter why you left. You did, and I actually do respect that you had your reasons for doing it. Now it’s your turn to respect the fact that I have my reasons for being glad it ‘happened.’”
    Brad sputtered a few choice words, dropped the bagels on the porch and stormed off. Grant let out a slow breath and slipped his arm around Harper’s shoulders. “I’m sorry about that. Should I have decked him?”
    She deflated, her cheeks cooling. In a second she went from ready to explode to shivering, and she huddled against Grant’s warmth for a moment. “No. Thanks for offering. I didn’t expect him to still want to talk.”
    “Are you okay?”
    She nodded and smoothed his shirt, then tugged the zipper of his own jacket up higher against the winter chill. “I’m fine. It’s all fine.”
    He held her gaze for a minute , and the depth of his stare had her heart rate up again. “I just want to be sure of one thing. That, between you and Brad, looked like it was over, but if it’s not…if there’s still anything there that needs to be resolved, let me know. I’ll stay out of the way.”
    “No. No.” She kissed him once, then again, longer and deeper. “I told him the truth. I’m not trying to make him jealous.” But it had sort of felt good to let Brad see she’d moved on. That thought made her cringe , so she refused to dwell on it.
    “Good. I don’t want to be the guy in the middle. I think we went a little fast, and I would really hate it if we both ended up regretting last night.” He tilted her chin up and rubbed a thumb along her lower lip. “I don’t want to regret last night.”
    “Never.”
    “Okay. I’ll talk to you later.” He kissed her once more and left, taking a moment to hand her the discarded bag of bagels.
    Once inside, in a fit of annoyance, Harper tore open the bag. Brad had bought all of her favorites along with coffee in a spill-proof box. He’d even included a small jar of her favorite orange marmalade. She sat down at the kitchen table and rested her head in her hands. She didn’t love Brad anymore , and that broke her heart. He wasn’t a bad guy, despite Audrey’s growing collection of nicknames for him, but now, she imagined, he thought she was a terrible person, a cheater, a slut of some kind. Audrey would tell her not to worry about it, but it bothered her, and she hated that it bothered her.
    Frustrated tears spilled down her cheeks when she realized she was losing control of herself. She was trying to prove something to herself with Grant, and maybe trying to prove something to Bradley , and she had to stop making statements with her actions and start making decisions about where to go from here. “What have I done?” she asked herself through tears. “And what am I going to do?”

 
Chapter Ten
     
     
    “You didn’t waste any time, did you?” Mrs. Dawson’s normally kind voice had taken on a shrill tone, and