Chapter 43
FORTY-THREE
Rhett
Present Day
M y stomach was a fucking mess as I stood outside Lainey’s apartment building, scrolling through the call box until I found her name, pressing the number beside it.
Two rings passed before she picked up. “Hi.”
“It’s Rhett.”
“I know. I can see you.” She laughed. “I’m in apartment 611.”
“I know.”
“Of course you do. I’ll buzz you in.”
When the front entrance unlocked, I walked to the elevator, taking it to the sixth floor, my hand barely knocking on the door when it opened.
Lainey stood in the entryway, holding the frame, and her eyes locked with mine. Her chest rose and fell and rose again before she finally said, “I just posted the photo to Instagram last night. I’m assuming you saw it, and that’s why you’re here?”
She was certainly creative.
I’d barely held my shit together when I saw it, the urge to come here almost outweighing my responsibilities.
“If I hadn’t had important meetings all day today, I would have skipped work and come this morning.”
“But you came.” Her expression was soft, her voice light.
And I knew in that moment, I’d read her post on Instagram the way she had intended.
A post that hit me so goddamn hard, I felt my entire life change.
I loosened my tie. I hadn’t even bothered to go home; I’d just come straight here from the office. “And miss an opportunity to spend time with you? Fuck that.” I smiled.
She smiled back and opened the door wider. “Come in.”
I stepped inside the apartment, a little taken aback that I was in Lainey’s space. For so many years, I’d wondered what her life looked like. That I was here, that I was getting a glimpse—that was hard to wrap my head around.
“I haven’t finished unpacking and decorating.” She joined me in the foyer. “Please ignore the disaster. I know how bad it looks, and I really wish you weren’t seeing it this way?—”
“It’s perfect.”
“You’re being nice.”
“It’s perfect,” I emphasized again. “I mean it. I can see you all over the room. Whether your shit is in boxes or your art is sitting on the floor, that doesn’t matter. It smells like you in here, and it feels like you in here.”
“Smells?”
While she was looking toward the living room, my focus was on her. My gaze dipped to her toes before slowly rising to her face. The yoga pants and tank top were showing every curve I’d been missing.
“Roses.”
“Ah. That. Yes.” She hugged her stomach and looked at me. “A scent I haven’t been able to give up.”
I wanted so fucking badly to reach for her, but I shoved my hands in my pockets instead. “I hope you never do.”
She grinned.
“There it is.” I nodded toward her face, my fingers fighting to stay tucked inside. “God, I’ve fucking missed that.”
She slowly took a breath. “Can I get you a drink?”
“Yes.”
“What do you want?”
You.
“Whatever you have is fine.”
“Take a seat in the living room. I’ll be there in a second.”
She left me in the foyer to go into the kitchen, and I watched the way she moved around the small room. My mind pictured her in my kitchen, her light-brown hair flying every time she turned, the early sunlight catching the golden streaks. Her hands on my countertops, mine wrapped around her stomach.
Fuck yes.
As I took a seat toward the center of the couch, I heard glasses hitting the countertop and the fridge open. The rattle of ice. The beautiful noise of her bare feet hitting the hardwood floor as she walked into the living room.
She handed me a tumbler. “It’s vodka.”
When she sat, putting a cushion between us, I held my glass out to her. “To unpacking memories.”
Her inhale was loud. “I’ll cheers to that.” She took a quick sip. “I feel like we have fifteen years to catch up on. I barely know anything about your life now. Just that you’re an executive for Cole and Spade Hotels.” Her eyes went wide. “Rhett, you followed your dream. You made it happen. I’m so proud of you.”
“It’s not exactly hard when your dad owned the company. But, yeah, I’m one of the head guys there now. When I first started out, I worked a bit in each department, getting a feel for the way everything ran, until I slid into an executive role. Now that we’ve merged with the Spades, the seven of us—we’re all equal partners—manage the daily operations. And aside from that, each one of us works on a hotel from start to finish, meaning we find the land, we help design the building, we’re there during construction, and we stay until it’s open.”
“Which hotel is yours?”
“Iceland.”
“Iceland, huh? I’ve been. It’s unbelievable. I mean that quite literally. The whole time I was there, I kept saying to myself, I can’t believe I’m here, and I’m seeing this .”
I chuckled. “My experience was similar.”
“I didn’t realize there was a Cole and Spade Hotel on the island. I don’t remember seeing that as a choice when I stayed there.”
“It’s not built yet. We’ll be breaking ground in a few months.” I took a deep breath. “And I’ll be moving there.”
Her brows rose and stayed high. “Moving there?”
“For six to eight months.”
She took another drink. “That’s … amazing.”
I slowly nodded. “You can call it that, I suppose.”
The room turned silent for several moments before she said, “What about your family? How’s Rowan? Ridge? Mom? Dad?”
“Rowan has a little girl now. Her name is Rayner. She’s just a tiny thing and so cute. She’s with Cooper Spade—one of our partners—and they’re getting married. Ridge is a single dad to Daisy. Well, he’s not so single anymore, he’s dating Daisy’s first-grade teacher.” I pulled out my phone and showed her my lock screen, which was Daisy and me at Disney. “That kid is my whole world.”
“She’s quite possibly the most beautiful little girl I’ve ever seen.”
“She is, and she has me wrapped around her sparkly pink-polished finger.” I chuckled and put the phone back in my pocket. “Fingers she recently had manicured when I took her to the nail salon.” I pointed down at my feet. “She demanded that we have matching toes.”
“Are you telling me you have sparkly pink polish on your feet?”
My head rocked up and down, and I ran my hand over the top of it. “That’s what I’m telling you.”
“I’m dying right now.”
I smiled. “Mom’s good, but Dad …” I drew in some air and held it in. “He passed not too long ago. When the doctor gave him only a couple of months, he fought like hell and blew through their projection. Eventually, the cancer got him.” I paused. “One of the worst days of my whole life.”
“Rhett, I had no idea.” She touched my arm, leaving her fingers there.
“Losing him … it’s been so rough. Dad was my best friend. We went through so much shit together. So many times, I wouldn’t have made it if it wasn’t for him. I still can’t believe he’s gone.”
Only someone who truly understood what that loss felt like could nod the way she was nodding now. “He was a wonderful man. Always so kind to me.”
I brought the glass up to my lips, keeping it close to my mouth while I said, “That’s pretty much it. Work, family, travel.”
“And trips to the cemetery.”
I swallowed the vodka. “Plenty of those, yes.”
“I bet Pen appreciates that.” She looked down at her lap. “Even now, I’m sure she wants all the attention.” Her voice was turning quieter. “I went the other day and brought her hot-pink flowers. The loudest-looking flowers in the whole cemetery, and all I could think was how much she’d approve.”
When she eventually gazed up, I asked, “How’s nursing? I assume that’s what you’re doing? Some type of traveling program and that’s why you’ve seen so much of the world?”
She rolled her shoulders forward in a shrug. “You would think so, but no.”
“No?”
“Once Pen died, that passion completely left me. I couldn’t stomach the thought of being around loss of any kind. But I still wanted to work in the medical field in some capacity, just not directly with the patients, so I shifted into health care administration. I work for a company that staffs and schedules for hospitals across the UK. All of it’s done online, which is why I can be anywhere in the world and do my job.”
Penelope’s death had affected every single part of her.
It hurt to hear that.
At the same time, I could relate.
“Do you like it?” I asked.
“I do. Except, without an office, there’s no culture, no stopping by someone’s desk and chatting, no meeting up in the kitchen to gossip. The closest employee lived about forty-five minutes from me in London. We’d sometimes meet halfway for lunch, but not often enough.” She tucked her legs beneath her. “That’s why I would travel so much. The walls of my flat would cave in.” She rubbed her hands against her thighs. “It’s funny, even though I wanted quietness, I couldn’t handle the silence at home.”
“Fuck, do I get that.”
“You do?”
I stretched my arm across the back of the couch and crossed my legs. “The quieter the room, the louder my thoughts.”
“Yes.”
“And those thoughts can bring me to a place where nothing feels right. Where I don’t feel right. Where I’m questioning if I’ll ever feel right again.” I filled my cheeks with air. “Then, the fear kicks in. Is this permanent? Will normal ever be within reach? It’s a spiral with no end, just millions of beginnings.”
“God, you do get it.” She mashed her lips together, her head falling back.
“When you found me at the cemetery, that’s where I was. Crawling out of my fucking skin. My senses on overload. Miserable. I was dreaming about Penelope. She kept telling me to wake up and open my eyes. I couldn’t understand why she was saying that. And then I did and …” I let those words hang there, taking my time to sip the vodka. “I couldn’t have opened my eyes to a better sight. It didn’t matter what you said to me, just hearing your voice, being around you, looking you in the eyes—that was enough. Even though, honestly, it wasn’t even close to enough.”
“Rhett, I wasn’t prepared for you to be there.”
I scanned her eyes, back and forth. “What were you thinking about when you saw me?”
“You mean, were the things I said to you that night one hundred percent true?”
I chuckled. “Sure, we can start there.”
“Where you were mentally, I was there too. And seeing you, that took me to a place I hadn’t expected.” She positioned her elbow on the back cushion and rested her face against her palm. “Instead of letting you in—which is something that probably would have benefited both of us in that moment—I tried my hardest to push you out.” Her head tilted to the side. “Saying to you that what you did was unforgivable, that wasn’t fair, it wasn’t true, and I’m sorry.”
When I tried to tell her I accepted her apology, she held up a finger.
“What’s ironic is that I told you it wasn’t an opportunity, it was just a coincidence that the both of us were there. But it wasn’t the only coincidence from our past, and technically, it was an opportunity.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Six months ago, I saw you in Bangkok.”
I shifted on the couch to face her more. “You saw me … in Bangkok?”
She nodded. “I was sitting outside a restaurant, and you walked by.”
My heart began to fucking pound. “Why didn’t you stop me? Why didn’t you say something?”
“I”—her head shook—“don’t know. It felt like too much. The way my emotions suddenly took over and my heart was beating—the whole thing felt so surreal, so out of body in a way. But what it did was show me that it was possible to actually feel something.” She turned silent. “I’d gone so long without feeling anything.”
I lifted her hand and held it to my chest, right over my heart so she could feel what was happening within me.
“Yes, Rhett, just like that.”
I didn’t release her fingers, and she didn’t pull them away. And when I tightened my grip, she still didn’t pull away then either.
“That’s when I made the decision to move home,” she admitted. “I’d been thinking about it, toying with the idea. Like I told you, I was tired of running. I just didn’t know if LA was where I wanted to plant my feet.”
I couldn’t believe she had seen me there.
That I’d walked right by her and hadn’t seen her.
That, somehow, I hadn’t felt her.
“Why did seeing me in Bangkok solidify your decision to come back?”
She drained the rest of her vodka and set the empty glass on a tray in the middle of the ottoman. “You know that whole out of sight, out of mind thing? That’s how it was, except it wasn’t like that at all.” She laughed. “I thought about you all the time. I just couldn’t see you, especially since you don’t have a presence online. I guess, in a way, that made things easier on me. My brain filled in the blanks, satisfying my curiosity. But then I saw you, and I completely spiraled. You started to consume me again, just like when I’d left to move to Europe.” She stopped to take several breaths. “I had no idea what would happen between us. If there was even a possibility of something happening. If I even wanted there to be one. I just knew I needed to come back.”
“You know there’s a possibility. You heard that in my words when I found you at the track, you’re seeing that right now on my face.”
This was going to be the most important question I ever asked, and everything in me was fucking shaking. It didn’t matter what she’d posted on Instagram or that the darkness had finally lifted or that I felt a bit of hope. What mattered was how she answered this.
“Do you want us?”
I needed to feel her. I needed her to feel me. I touched her cheek, my heart melting the moment I came in contact with her skin.
“Because I want to give you everything, Lainey. I want to be with you. I want to love you forever. I want to marry you. I want to have children with you. And I don’t want to ever spend a second away from you.” I halted. “But I don’t know what you want.”
“You.” There was no hesitation in her reply. “Rhett, you’re all I’ve ever wanted. But I need to take things slow. I’m not talking a date once a week and speaking to each other every few days. Nothing at all like that.” She shook her head. “I’m also not saying we should move in together next week.”
I chuckled. Because I fucking would.
“I loved the eighteen-year-old you,” she continued. “I loved the nineteen and twenty and all the way up to thirty-three-year-old you. But a lot of time has passed, and I want to continue getting to know you all over again.” Her hand went to her chest. “I want to fall, like I fell back then.”
My other hand gripped the back of my neck, releasing the air I’d been holding in while she spoke. My gaze was getting a little blurry as I stared at her, the water making it hard to see the finer details of her face.
“Did I say something that upset you?”
“Upset me?” I forced the emotion down. “You just made me the happiest man alive.” My hand lowered to her neck. “I’ve dreamed about this day, Lainey. Shit, I’ve dreamed of many things when it came to you, but this …” I bit my bottom lip. “I didn’t think it was ever going to happen. I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life loving you from afar, silently wishing you happy birthday every year, telling Penelope my hopes of marrying her sister …” My nostrils flared as I exhaled. “And never getting to spend birthdays with you, or watching you walk down the aisle toward me, or seeing your belly swell with my baby inside.”
Her eyes filled so fast; I didn’t get there in time before the drips spilled over. “Our baby.”
I caught the first few. “A little boy named Penn Ray Cole.”
She let out a sob. “And if it’s a girl?”
“There are too many baby girls in my family. We’re having a boy.” I reached across the couch, sliding forward just enough that I could pull her against me.
“I want all of that,” she whispered. “I love you.”
Her body fit in my arms and against my chest. Just as perfectly now as it had back then.
“Lainey, I love you.” I held her back and the tops of her shoulders and the base of her neck, and when I pulled away, my palms slid to her cheeks. I kept her steady, gazing into her eyes. “It’s always been you. Nothing has ever changed that; nothing will ever change that.”
As I closed the distance between our faces, her eyes shut, and her lips parted.
There wasn’t a sight in this world that was as beautiful as Lainey Taylor.
My mouth surrounded her top lip, my tongue touched hers, and I moaned as I tasted her. My movements were slow as I memorized this new feel, even though, technically, it wasn’t new at all. I let the sensations grow between us while getting reacquainted with a mouth that I’d missed so badly.
I pressed her cheeks, and I pulled even closer despite the fact that not even air was separating us.
And when I knew I was on the verge of taking it further, which I didn’t want to do tonight, I gently released her lips.
There was silence.
A quietness where so much was said yet not a single word was spoken.
And I finally broke it with, “Have you eaten dinner?”
She smiled, and I could feel it on my hands as I continued to hold her. “Aside from vodka, no. Admittedly, that’s been my dinner lately.”
“We’re going out.”
Her eyes grew large. “Now?”
“Yes.”
“I need to change. I’m a mess?—”
“You look absolutely gorgeous, Lainey.”
“But you’re in a suit. I’m in yoga pants.”
“And that’s just how I want you. You never have to get all done up for me. I’m in love with you just the way you are.” I traced my thumb over her lips. “There’s a Thai place down the street from here. I’ll be overdressed, not you. What do you say? Are you down?”
“I can’t say no to noodles.” As I laughed, she gripped my wrist. “Or you.”
Lainey
Thank you for an amazing dinner and the most incredibly unexpected night.
And for dropping me off at my apartment and being a complete gentleman.
Me
It took a massive amount of effort. The gentleman part, I mean.
Lainey
I can only imagine.
Me
I’ll talk to you in the morning?
Lainey
I hope so.
Me
Good night, Lainey.
Lainey
Get some sleep.