I didn’t process the magnitude of what I’d done until I was safely inside Hawthorne House. I told the press that I have the answers they want. It was the first time I’d spoken to them, the first real footage anyone had of me, and I’d lied through my teeth.
Oren was right. Alisa was going to kill me.
I found Libby in the kitchen, surrounded by cupcakes. Literally hundreds of them. If she’d been an apology baker back home, the addition of an industrial-grade kitchen with triple ovens had basically taken her nuclear.
“Libby?” I approached her cautiously.
“Do you think I should go for red velvet or salted caramel next?” Libby was holding an icing bag with both hands. Blue hair had escaped her ponytail and was matted to her face. She wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“She’s been at it for hours,” Nash told me. He stood leaning back against a stainless-steel refrigerator, his thumbs hooked through the belt loops of his well-worn jeans. “Her phone’s been going off for just as long.”
“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here.” Libby looked up from the cupcakes she was icing to narrow her eyes at Nash.
“Yes, ma’am.” Nash smiled, wide and slow. I wondered how long he’d been with her—why he’d been with her.
“Drake is gone,” I told Libby, hoping Nash would take that as his cue that he wasn’t needed here. “I took care of it.”
“I’m supposed to take care of you.” Libby shoved her hair out of her face. “Stop looking at me like that, Avery. I’m not going to break.”
“’Course not, darlin’,” Nash said, from his spot leaning against the fridge.
“You…” Libby looked at him, a spark of annoyance lighting up her eyes. “You shut up.”
I’d never heard Libby tell someone to shut up in her life, but at least she didn’t sound fragile or hurt or in any danger of texting Drake back. I thought about Alisa saying that Nash Hawthorne had a savior complex.
“Shutting up now.” Nash picked up a cupcake and took a bite out of it like it was an apple. “For what it’s worth, I vote for red velvet next.”
Libby turned back to me. “Salted caramel it is.”
