Free Getting Over It: Sapphire Falls Book Six by Erin Nicholas

finally picked up on the fact that he was faking a fight with her for the onlookers, but she’d seen the truth in his eyes—he didn’t like having anything between them.
    This was getting out of hand quickly.
    She had to put a stop to all of this. Even if it meant she quit speaking to him and turned up her bitch setting to high.
    She saw Ty’s truck pull into the drive and her heart kicked against her ribs.
    She could put her bitch back on tomorrow. For tonight, she needed Ty. She needed to know more about Bryan’s accident and how Ty was handling it and if Ty was okay and…
    Yeah, she was in trouble.
    Talking and sharing wasn’t part of their…thing. She sensed sometimes Ty wanted to push it and go deeper, but she also knew he was waiting for a signal from her that she wanted more, and the truth was she didn’t.
    She’d liked things exactly as they were. She liked having a life in Sapphire Falls and an escape in Denver. She didn’t want the two to mix. The times when Ty was home to visit were bad enough. She lost her edge when he was around. She let go with Ty. She unwound. She didn’t worry about things. She didn’t push herself. She left behind her sticky notes and highlighters and meditation exercises and the feeling of constantly being on . And it felt great.
    But it was like eating the Everything Pizza from the Stop, the convenience store/gas station/pizza place/ice cream shop. It was okay once in a while, as long as she was back to working out and watching her carbs immediately afterward.
    She saw Ty’s living room light go on and started for her back door. She was going over.
    She needed to know more about Bryan and she… Dammit , she wanted to hug Ty.
    Hailey wasn’t a hugger by nature. Keeping people at arm’s length made hugging difficult. But she wasn’t going to be able to help it.
    She was so torn. She wanted to keep her distance from him but couldn’t now that she knew he was going through something. He and Bryan were close. Seeing his friend so badly hurt doing something they both loved had to be hard on Ty too.
    The realization that Ty had been driven home to Sapphire Falls by seeing Bryan’s life-changing injury was really bugging her. Ty had clearly been spooked by it all. But Ty had to understand that it was Bryan’s challenge, that continuing to compete didn’t make him a bad person, and that he couldn’t hide out in Sapphire Falls.
    And he couldn’t use her as an excuse.
    She stepped through her gate and into Ty’s backyard. As Ty was coming out of his back door.
    She hesitated and then frowned. Ty called the shots when they were together in Denver. But, as she’d told him at the dance, this was her town.
    There was a streetlight on the front sidewalk between their houses and the light made its way dimly into his backyard, giving it a glow.
    “You’re gonna have grass clippings all over your backside if you don’t keep coming,” he said gruffly.
    She knew that voice. She loved that voice. It meant she was going to be getting an orgasm that was going to make her head spin, her toes curl and her eyes cross.
    The Tyler Bennett special.
    “Ty, I—” But God, she actually wanted to talk . To see if he was okay.
    She never wanted to talk. Talking led to revelations and revelations led to telling secrets and exposing insecurities and weaknesses.
    It wasn’t just her flakiness or her inability to set goals and see them through without a crutch—or twenty—that held her back from diving into this relationship. Yes, he distracted her. Yes, he made her natural disorganization worse. But more than that, Ty thought she was someone she wasn’t. His crush was on the woman she wanted to be, the one she put on for the world. Which meant his crush wasn’t real . She’d never been able to tell him that. She hadn’t been able to handle the idea of losing him and the attention that made her feel as though she was someone special.
    Ty was one of the strongest people she knew—in body