If there wasn’t, it was rapidly being replaced now.
I grunted and pushed through the door to Hurd’s, the bell brokenly dinging my arrival. Letting my hood fall back, the snow caught up in it tumbled to the ground like a small blanket.
“Yoo-hoo. Welcome to Hurd’s.”
My face remained impassive, but I nodded to the familiar friendly face of the very large man behind the counter and pulled down my scarf. His eyes popped wide, recognition brightening his features.
“Oh, goodness. I’m not surprised to see you, but I am surprised you made it.”
His musings followed me while I grabbed a basket and turned into the nearest aisle—like the small, stacked shelves would be able to hide me. They didn’t.
“It’s really starting to come down out there. Did you borrow a snowmobile?”
I let out a long exhale. “No. My SUV was fine.”
I hadn’t listened to Winna’s recommendation about going out for food the other day, deciding to stay on my liquid and lunchmeat diet for as long as possible—longer than possible really. I would’ve ventured out yesterday, but my lawyer had left me a voicemail, though no call had ever come through, that there was some paperwork I needed to finalize. So, the majority of the day I’d spent in a cyber fight with a hostile hotspot, trying to find enough internet to get the very last of my work done.
The very last of what would tie me to the company I’d built and the betrayals it had brought me.
This morning, I’d woken up to the sound of her dog howling—the exact timing of the noise each morning making me question its coincidence. And by then, the snow was already coming down.
“Oh, dear,” the other man mumbled loud enough for me to hear.
“It was fine.” Or as fine as driving in a Michigan snowstorm can be.
Silence descended while I wandered back and forth through the few aisles, noting the strange juxtaposition of fresh, packaged meat—the kind you’d get from an expensive butcher—in a cooler next to shelves containing microwaveable mashed potatoes, Mac and cheese, and ramen noodles.
With a shrug and a shake of my head, I picked up one of everything, tossing them into my basket.
The six inches of shelf real estate that held cookies made me stop and longingly eye up the double-stuff Oreos. Before FinWeb took off, when it was just me working out of an office above my garage, Hailey and I could easily kill a package of those in one night. We didn’t do it often, but it was a treat when we did. My jaw tightened. That all ended once the money really began to come in.
She’d volleyed between the latest diet fads, promoting each one and her slender form, as an Instagram influencer—her profile able to take off because of the luxuries my company’s profits were able to buy her. I’d not only built up myself when I’d built my company, but I’d funded her ‘career’, too. And Andy’s.
“Can I help you find something, Mr…”
“Ryan.” I flinched and hissed, catching Kurt’s eyes and the dimples of his smile peering over the edge of the shelf in front of me. “And no, I lost track of my thoughts, but I know exactly what I want.”
I reached out and grabbed two boxes of the double-stuffs with a smile on my face.
One more step and the distinct design of the SpaghettiOs cans in my periphery made me stop and rock back on my heels with a different kind of memory.
“Still hurting?” he asked from the end of the aisle now.
I cleared my throat. “Fully recovered.”
In fact, I could hardly recall the pain my balls had endured because everything else about Winna’s memory had blasted that one into dust. Her beauty. Her kindness. The warmth of her person.
God, I was such an asshole.
One more reason I’d come here today—to make amends. I’d been a jerk, and I’d deserved that arrow to places much more jarring than the ground at my feet for how I’d treated her in the woods—in my anger. But she brought out this rawness in me—a realness that was hard to control.
“Glad to hear it.” He nodded, able to appreciate the kind of pain being nailed in the nuts brought to a person. “Might I suggest some of the fresh venison patties in the meat section?” I swallowed my chuckle. The meat section was a single cooler. “She made them fresh yesterday.”
My attention swung to him. She.
I’d heard the roar of the snowmobile leave down our shared driveway yesterday and caught the sled hauling some animal behind it. I remembered because I thought of how close I’d come to being the hunted carcass.
“Thanks.”
I should’ve gone to the counter and paid and left. Instead, I went back to the meat section and eyed up her handiwork. Burgers and several fresh cuts of meat were packaged in the display. I picked one up and my stomach rumbled for the first time in days at the thought of a burger. Without a second thought, I dropped it in my basket. Maybe that would help with my apology—complimenting her hunting and butchering skills.
I tried to remember the last time I’d had a venison burger—before Hailey. And then I laughed. Hailey would never be caught dead in a store like this, she’d never buy so much processed canned pasta she couldn’t hold them all, never think venison jerky was the way to apologize, and absolutely never even dream of hunting and butchering her own food. Though to see her try to cook a veggie burger would make you wonder if vegetable cruelty should be a thing.
Hailey would never be so awkward or exasperating. Winna Madden, on the other hand, was a walking, talking calamity.
I shook my head, wondering why the hell I was even comparing the two—my ex-girlfriend of three years and my new neighbor of less than a week. Maybe because the brain naturally wanted to replace thoughts of my ex with those of another woman. Or maybe because the comparison between something so fake with something very, albeit hazardously, real was too great a canyon of character to ignore.
“Will that be all for today? How about something from our sale section?” He hummed between each question, retrieving both the perfectly processed food I’d chosen along with the ground venison I’d picked from the cooler.
Fuck you, Hailey Anderson. Fuck you and your strict adherence to your meat-free, processed food free, gluten-free—but not adultery-free—diet.
I turned to the sale section, knowing it had nothing to offer me, a familiar sticker caught my eye along the way. Four Jerks Jerky.
I reached out and grabbed a package off the rack, staring at it like it was a rare find. ‘I brought you some of my jerky!’ Her words rang out in my memory, only now clicking with recognition that she’d actually made that, too.
“This was amazing,” I said quietly. In case the jury was wondering, the awkward apology-jerky was delicious. “Is it only sold here?”
I flipped the bag over, taking in the details I’d ignored before. It wasn’t any of my business where it was sold, but the entrepreneur in me knew a good product when I saw—or tasted—one and her jerky was a damn good product—one that should be shipping all over the country.
I looked up, waiting for an answer, to see Kurt’s head tip to the side. “For now.”
Not your business, Ryan. I let the thought go, but not the jerky.
“I’ll take this.” I plucked two more bags off the rack and set them on the counter.