Xan smiled, his eyes going soft. “She’s a typical Filipina mother.”
I shook my head, at a loss. “What does that mean?”
He sighed and sat back on his heels. “Her biggest goal in life is to see her children happily married. She saw us on Facebook together, and now she thinks we’re getting married. She wanted to make sure I invited you to come to our family dinner this Sunday.”
“What did she say about Miranda Lockhart?” I steered him back toward the source of my pain.
“I told you she was a fan?” he asked.
I nodded. That was one of the last things I remembered before everything happened.
“My mom knows everything Miranda Lockhart does. She’s in a bunch of Facebook groups that stalk the poor woman.”
My eyes narrowed at the description of Sally as a poor woman.
“Ma only wanted to talk about my impending nuptials. She didn’t say anything about…” He paused, obviously at a loss for words.
I pressed my knuckles to my eyes, wishing I could take back what had just happened.
Xan reached up to pry my hands away from my face. “Don’t worry about it too much. Something else will happen and everyone will forget about that… whatever it was.”
If only I could dismiss it as easily as Xan, but I couldn’t.
“You might not realize it, but that was a pretty big deal. I did something horrible. Something I can never take back.”
Xan grasped my hands and gave them a gentle squeeze. “Did you commit a crime?”
I shook my head. “I betrayed someone.”
“Let me guess… That someone is a stuck-up suit with a killer right hook.” Xan grimaced.
I nodded. “Beckett.” Just saying his name made me feel like I’d been the one to get punched.
Xan’s eyes lit up as he put the pieces together. His mouth dropped open, his eyes went wide, and his fingers tightened on mine. “No way,” he said.
I nodded, feeling miserable. “It’s true.”
“So that wasn’t the real Miranda Lockhart?” He glanced around and dropped his voice. We were quite alone in the self-help aisle. The rest of the store was gathered in Romance. “That lady was not the one who wrote those books my mom’s obsessed with?”
“No,” I said. “She’s just a front.”
“No way.”
“Way.”
Xan’s eyes went round as the truth finally hit home. “That dude that hit me writes romance novels…” He said each word slowly, as if testing the theory.
A loud noise at the end of the aisle drew our attention. I looked over to see Beckett standing a few feet away. The noise had been him dropping his briefcase on the floor. Feet planted wide apart, arms crossed over his chest, broad body taking up the whole aisle, Beckett looked like a volcano ready to erupt.
“It’s ‘who,’” he said, a murderous look in his eye. “That dudewhohit you writes romance novels.”
Xan dropped my hands, and I scrambled to my feet.
“What are you doing here?” I asked Beckett.
His eyes flicked from Xan to me, shooting daggers. “I came to see you. I have to leave, and I wanted to say goodbye.”
“I’ll let you two talk.” Xan rose to his feet and stepped aside. I tried to give him back his handkerchief, but he pressed in against my palm. “Keep it.” He wisely slipped past Beckett and disappeared around the end of the aisle.
