Chapter 48 I’ll Have the Hallway Ambush with a Touch of Hormone Mutiny
AMANDA
The end of the workweek cannot come fast enough.
I’ve spent the last five days playing the world’s most exhausting game of hide-and-seek, ducking around corners and taking alternative routes through the store like I’m a retail spy avoiding enemy agents.
Except the enemy agent is my ex-husband who looks unfairly good in business casual and keeps trying to help me with displays.
I grab my purse, check my lipstick in my compact mirror, and power-walk toward the elevator. And because Izzy is a traitor who goes home to watch HBO with her husband instead of getting wine-drunk with me and helping me process my feelings like a good best friend should, I need alternative plans.
I pull out my phone and fire off a text to my sister.
I’m coming over.
RAVEN
Why?
Do I need a reason to visit my beloved baby sister?
You never come over.
That’s not true!
Amanda, you’ve been to my apartment exactly twice. Once when I moved in and once when you thought I was dead because I didn’t answer your calls for six hours.
I was being a caring, attentive sister.
You were having a panic attack because you’d watched too many true-crime documentaries.
I need to breathe in good oxygen from all your houseplants.
You’re being weird.
I’m always weird. That’s my brand.
This is a different kind of weird. This is “my life is falling apart and I need to hide in my sister’s apartment while I figure out how to be a functional human being” weird.
Okay, but I’m still coming over.
Fine. But I’m making you help me repot my succulents. And you’re paying for Thai food.
I’m typing out a response when steady hands grip me by the shoulders.
I look up to find Kade standing there, hallway ambush specialist, annoyingly gorgeous in the soft lighting. He’s wearing his leather jacket like he rode straight out of my dirtiest fantasies.
“Sorry,” he says, his hands still on my shoulders, voice low and rough in that way that does illegal things to my nervous system. “Didn’t want to startle you.”
I shake free of his grip and try to step around him, but he moves to block my path. I huff and try the other direction. He blocks me again, like we’re doing a choreographed dance that I definitely didn’t sign up for.
“Can I help you?” I ask, putting on my most professional customer service voice.
“Let me give you a ride home.”
I purse my lips, trying to maintain my resolve. “I’m not going home.”
“Cool. Let me give you a ride to not-home, then.”
“How can you give me a ride?” I ask, trying to inject some sass into my voice to cover up the fact that I’m internally spiraling.
“You threw out your bike helmet, remember? Very dramatic, a symbolic purge. I’m sure it made a satisfying crash when it hit the bottom of whatever dumpster you tossed it into. ”
Something shifts in his expression. “It was more of an emotional, metaphorical throwing out. I definitely still need that for safety reasons. But glad to know you read my messages.”
Dammit. I wasn’t supposed to admit that I read them.
I wasn’t supposed to admit that I read every single one, multiple times.
That almost every night, I’ve lain in bed at two a.m. with my phone screen brightness turned down, scrolling through them over and over.
Reading them in the bathroom at work. In line at the grocery store.
To the point where I have them all memorized.
To the point where reading them has become a form of self-harm, because every time I see his words, it makes me wonder if I’ll ever be able to trust anyone again, or if he broke me permanently.
I try to step around him again, and again he moves to intercept me. This time, I actually huff out loud, because this is ridiculous. We’re two adults, not middle schoolers playing tag in the hallway.
But God, this is so hard. Because part of me wants to say yes.
It would be so easy to just get on that bike and wrap my arms around him and pretend that the last eight years didn’t happen.
That he didn’t choose to disappear. That I didn’t spend months calling hospitals and police stations, convinced something terrible had happened, because I couldn’t emotionally cope with the idea that he just left.
That I didn’t have to learn how to be a person again after he took half of me with him.
I want to bury myself between his shoulder blades and breathe in his scent and let it wipe my mind clean of the feeling of being utterly and completely abandoned by the person you thought was going to be your entire world.
But I can’t forget. Because I lived it. And until now, I was surviving it.
And doing this, getting on his bike, letting him get close again, would feel like touching a flame after you just singed your hand on the stove.
“Look, I don’t mean to pressure you,” he says, and his voice is different, too. Quieter, more honest. “I just want to start over.”
“Start over?”
“Yeah. I mean, you deserve that. Get to know me now, and I want to know everything about you now. And then, after that, if you don’t like me and don’t want to see me anymore, then I’ll have to respect that. And I know I don’t deserve it, but maybe… give me the chance?”
I stand there and look at him. I don’t even know if I can do that. My entire existence is currently being held up by a Kade-shaped hole in my heart, and he’s asking me to give him back the blade that he used to cut it out.
“Please.” He whispers the word. I stare at him for a long moment, watching the way he’s trying so hard not to look desperate even though we both know he is. The way he’s holding himself still, waiting for my answer like it might determine the rest of his life.
And maybe it will.
“Fine,” I say finally, the word coming out more reluctant than I intended. “You can drive me to Raven’s place.”
The relief that washes over his face is almost painful to watch. Like I just granted him a stay of execution instead of agreeing to a fifteen-minute motorcycle ride across town.
“Thank you,” he says, and there’s so much weight in those two words that I have to look away.
We walk toward the parking garage in silence. He leads me to his bike and pulls out a helmet.
“I can give you a ride back to your place, too,” he says as he hands it to me, his fingers brushing mine in the exchange.
“Don’t push it,” I warn, but there’s no real heat in my words.
He grins at that, the first genuine smile I’ve seen from him all day, and it transforms his entire face. Makes him look younger, less guarded, more like the man I fell in love with in Vegas all those years ago.
I hate how much I’ve missed that smile. Hate how it makes my chest tight and my knees weak, how it reminds me of lazy Sunday mornings when he’d look at me like I was the only thing that mattered in the world.
Hate how those memories feel like land mines now.
Hate that one wrong step might blow apart the fragile composure I’m clinging to.
I pull on the helmet, trying to drown out my thoughts.
He swings his leg over the bike and starts the engine, the rumble vibrating through the concrete beneath my feet.
I climb onto the bike behind him, my legs bracketing his hips, my arms wrapping around his waist. The fit is perfect, comfortable, like no time has passed at all.
Like we’re still us. Him and me against the world.
The leather of his jacket is soft under my palms, and I can feel the solid warmth of his body through the material.
Can feel the way his muscles shift as he adjusts his grip on the handlebars.
Can feel his breathing, steady and controlled, even though I know this has to be affecting him as much as it’s affecting me.
I hate how good this feels. Hate how right it feels to be wrapped around him like this, how natural it is to press myself against his back and let him take control.
Hate that after eight years of independence and self-sufficiency, all it takes is thirty seconds on the back of his bike to make me remember what it felt like to have someone take care of me.
“Ready?” he calls over the sound of the engine.
No, I think. I’m not ready for any of this. Not ready to trust him, not ready to forgive him, not ready to risk my heart all over again on a man who’s already proven he can disappear without warning.
But I nod anyway.
“Ready,” I lie.