Targeted By Love (Between the Greys #1)

6. Rhodes

6

RHODES

I was a mess. Such a freakin’ mess. Maynard was here, and it was like nothing had changed. Yet, at the same time, everything had changed. Suddenly, it wasn’t a case of me being at a wedding I didn’t want to be at. Instead, it felt like I was stuck in a dream—a dream of what could have been.

Years ago, I’d closed my eyes and imagined the two of us dancing together, only it wasn’t my asshole brother’s wedding in my fantasy. It was ours—Maynard’s and mine. Even then, I knew we weren’t meant to be. The two of us were going to be traveling down different paths in life. But still, it felt so perfect, so right.

But it wasn’t back then. And it couldn’t be now. We weren’t those same people we used to be. Two teens in love never amounted to more than either the past or a present filled with resentment. That was just how it worked. If anything, us going our separate ways saved us from all the heartbreak that would’ve been—basically, it was a form of pulling off the bandage.

Only the hurt never went away. Not really. Sure, I’d dated since then, but they never compared to Maynard. No one ever came close. Why bother trying?

Except today, with him, I did bother, and what did I get? Rejection. And that rejection made everything clear in a way that gutted me.

He had a client in the morning, which I suppose was a valid reason to turn me down. It wasn’t as if I asked him to stay awake all night. That wasn’t what upset me, though. I didn’t know what the client was for. Was he working for his family? Was he an accountant? A hairdresser? There were a thousand and one jobs he could have, and I didn’t even know that bare minimum about him.

And if I didn’t know that very little tiny detail about his life, I didn’t know him at all anymore.

Which made the way I felt like he was my home beyond confusing. We were basically strangers now, and all I wanted was to stay by his side and never leave it. It made absolutely no sense, but what about love did?

Love. That was what tonight did, it rekindled those old emotions. For a split moment, I allowed myself to believe that today was the beginning of something great. But instead of leaving with him and starting our happily ever after—the kind that only existed in storybooks—he went his way, and I went mine.

Somewhere along the way, I lost my heart.

I went into full-on cliché mode, deciding to go to the apartment I had borrowed for the week just in case I couldn’t handle things with my family . I hadn’t expected to be using it for a broken heart, but then again, I didn’t expect to see Maynard, either. I stopped at the nearest corner convenience store along the way. I’d be back for brunch tomorrow, but I needed a place to be miserable, and that started with drowning my sorrow in sweets.

I grabbed not one but three pints of ice cream, unsure which one I wanted. Heck, it was possible I was going to devour all three. I needed something to drown these feelings—or at least mask them with the feeling of a stomach ache. It could go either way. At this point, I didn’t care which won out, as long as the turmoil and heartbreak rolling through me was forgotten, even if only for a moment.

Maybe I should’ve snagged one of the bottles of wine and thrown myself a full-on proper pity party for one.

Instead, I threw off my tux and sat in my boxer briefs and undershirt, an old movie playing in the background, as I ate an entire pint of peanut butter chocolate ice cream.

How freakin’ pathetic was I?

Even my asshole brother found happiness, and me? I found the bottom of a carton and had seriously been contemplating grabbing the cookie dough ice cream and having a repeat performance.

I tried to go to sleep. I really did. But I wasn’t able to. Instead, I stared at a little fleck on the ceiling, the light coming through the curtains that didn’t quite meet in the middle. I was too lazy to get up and fix them.

Try as I could to suppress the memories, they came flooding back. Once upon a time, the two of us were inseparable. Sure, we were young and foolish, but that love was real. It might not have been forever love—no one finds that as a kid—but it might as well have been. I felt it that deeply. At boarding school, it was the two of us against the world. At least that’s what I believed wholeheartedly at the time.

We were inseparable, spending hours hiking in the woods, watching movies, or taking the shuttle to the diner to grab a platter of fries. I’d dip mine in ranch, and he’d dip his in ketchup, and we’d argue about which was better. It was an argument neither of us would ever win, and yet, we kept it going.

If we’d gone to the same college, I wondered what it would’ve been like. Would we still be together? Would we hate each other? Only we didn’t. I’d wanted to get out of town more than anything—not stopping for a second to think what that “anything” entailed, which was losing Maynard.

I tossed. I turned. I tossed again. Finally, I gave up and got out of bed.

Screw this. Sleep wasn’t happening. Might as well stop pretending it would.

Maybe some steam would help me get into a better position to sleep? I grabbed a shower, hating that the remnants of his scent were washing away. But how messed up was it that the smell of his cologne was so entrenched in my memory? Not only did I still remember it—he still wore it.

I’d been through three or four colognes since then but had recently stopped wearing any altogether. He, however, still used the same sexy scent. He might not’ve looked the same as he did all those years ago, but when we danced and my eyes fluttered shut, it was as if I were back there. Funny how a strong scent unlocked memories.

If I had a bottle of it, I’d have sprayed my sheets with it every night. I should’ve asked him what it was. No, that was messed up. Finding out someone’s signature scent just to spray it on your pillow or clothes? That was an entirely new level of clinger unlocked.

All I wanted to do was go to him. Hold him close. Tell him that I missed him. Tell him I wanted him back. Ask him not to leave me.

There was nothing rational about any of that. For all I knew, we’d had some nice dancing and wedding fun, but that was it. Wasn’t there some sort of saying about weddings making you more susceptible to crushes or one-night stands? That was probably all it was for him.

I got out of the shower, dried off, and grabbed my phone. I was officially giving up. I needed to see him.

If I got there and he rejected me, then he rejected me. But if I got there and he felt the same? Wouldn’t it be worth it?

I tapped away, trying to find him. Finding his last name was easy, but there were multiple people in his family. I didn’t know any of them, but I found an address that was my best guess. It might’ve not been his, but it was a start.

It wasn’t like there were a thousand families with that name in town. If I got there and it didn’t work out, at least I’d tried. I wouldn’t regret finding out it was one-sided, but I’d always regret a life of what-ifs.

What if I’d been brave enough to find him? What if I’d told him how I felt all those years ago? What if we didn’t go our separate ways after school? And now… what if?

I tried to talk myself out of it, I did. But I failed miserably and found myself taking a bus and then walking down the street toward the address I found. About three quarters of the way there, I got a weird sense of being followed. I wasn’t normally the type of guy who worried about others. I focused on myself, minded my own business, and assumed everybody else was doing the same.

But this was creepy.

I felt like someone was there, but I didn’t see anyone, even after making a pretense to look around by dropping my wallet. By all accounts, I was alone. Still, I stepped a little faster.

And as I reached the address I was in search of, I came face to face with a wolf.

Not someone’s large pet dog, like perhaps a husky, who could resemble a wolf in the dark. Not something that could possibly be a wolf. This was a full-on, freaking wolf.

I had half a memory of a documentary about wild animals. They said you shouldn’t run from bears. You just stand there, hope they go away, or make noise and look big. One of the two. Either way, it didn’t matter.

This wasn’t a bear.

No one ever taught me what to do when faced with a wolf. So I did what any scared person in the middle of the night would do.

I screamed and then I ran straight through the not fully closed door and into the building without knocking.