Chapter 2
Christian
It’s humbling when the entire population of the small town you grew up in laugh in your face when you return for the first time in four years, wearing a custom Tom Ford suit.
It’s even more humbling when your old best friends make fun of the suit and the car to your face.
But the most humbling thing is watching the girl you came back for throw her arms around some guy she is about to kiss.
Levi Campbell has his hands on her hips, and I don’t miss the way she flinches. But she’s letting him touch her anyway. And the cherry on top? She’s smiling, giving him those dimples that are mine. The same dimples I used to press my thumbs into with a grin on my face.
I love these.
They’re just dimples.
But they’re my favorite.
Now my eyes are burning and my teeth hurt from the clenching because their mouths are mere inches apart. Levi is going to kiss my girl and she’s going to let him. It should be fine. I should have expected her to move on, it would be a shitty thing for me to think she’d wait for me all this time.
I tried to move on. It didn’t work and I spent regrettable and dark moments with women. And all of those moments should have been happy and intimate with Lana. I did what I had to to forget. It would be unfair of me to think she couldn’t do the same.
Lana is leaning in closer to him now. Her lips part the way they used to for me, and I can’t watch.
But Lana stops, just a few seconds before it happens, and her eyes find mine.
I swear everything stops, maybe even my heart—which I’m fine with as long as I’m looking at her.
I could die a happy man right now, as long as she’s looking at me.
The only eyes that have ever mattered to me are the only woman who has ever mattered to me.
She drops down onto her feet and unravels her arms from around him, and shoves him. The smile she gives him is a shit one. I know that smile, it’s fake and usually mixed with a bit of I don’t like you so I’m not going to talk to you in it. That’s the one she gives him.
Mine.
The golden boy is talking to her and she’s pretending to listen, but her eyes are on me. I know Lana well—too well. And she knows me just the same. But that look in her eyes, I don’t know it and it’s terrifying me.
“Shit,” Nico hisses at my side. “You're not gonna go get her?”
I only came back into this small town this morning and Nicolas was the first person I called. I couldn’t call her yet, I knew that, so I didn’t even risk it.
I called Nico who called Luca, Rowan, and Julian so we could all meet up again for the first time in four years, and I was hoping they hated me.
I met them at a calm bistro in town for burgers but the only one of us who didn’t show was Julian—at least not tonight since he was taking care of his three year old daughter and still adjusting to single-father life.
And, as it turned out, they didn’t hate me.
They missed me and clapped me on the back and made fun of my car and suit.
They called me out on my bullshit, got angry with me, and cursed, but they don’t hate me. A part of me almost wants them too though. When they were done, I gave them my explanation and, like good friends, they heard me. They listened and they offered every ounce of their help and support.
Although we’re in a bar on a Saturday night, I told them it was okay. I told them I could handle it because it’s been a year and a half, and I’m okay now. And even if I felt like I couldn’t trust myself, my friends are here and they know. So they wouldn’t let me even think of it.
“I can’t,” I tell Nico. “Not yet.”
Rowan nudges me with his shoulder. “So you came here in your disgusting, dark purple McLaren—” Luca laughs and I roll my eyes. “—and with your stupid ass suit and fat wad of cash, but you didn’t come with a plan?”
“My plan was to get here and talk to her.” I shrug. My real plan was to wing it, but even that plan was inchoate. Hasn’t worked. “How come you didn’t tell me she was here?”
Luca shrugs but wears a knowing smirk. “Isa told me they were going out, I didn’t know they were coming here.”
“She’s your twin,” Rowan says. “You tell each other everything.”
Nico mumbles, “Almost everything.”
Ignoring that comment, Luca pushes my back hard enough to make me jerk forward. “Go, she’s walking out.”
I shake my head. She hates me. “I can’t.”
Nico shrugs, lowering his beer from his mouth. “Alright, don’t. Levi is about to follow her I think.”
“Like hell,” I growl.
I leave the guys behind and push through the people in the bar, focused on one person. I follow her short frame and her long brown hair. I’d know her anywhere. In any crowded room—even blind folded and spun around a hundred times, when I point, my finger will land on her. Every time.
The door opens and she walks through it. I push it open again, just before it closes, and walk out after her. I look to my right and she’s disappeared.
“I knew it!”
My head snaps to my left and she’s standing there against the building, her arms crossed and hip cocked. She’s so fucking gorgeous, I could get onto my knees right now and repent.
But then her nostrils flare and her lips flatten into a line before she pushes off the bricks and shouts. Still gorgeous. “I knew it!”
Her legs bring her right to me and Lana shoves my chest, hard enough to make me stagger back. “Are you drunk?” She points her finger at me. “Answer me, damn it—Are you drunk?”
I hold up my hands in surrender. I wish she’d just slap me or punch me, or both. “No, Lana. I’m not drunk.”
“Then why the hell are you in a bar?” Lana yells.
“Because I’m seeing my old friends.”
Lana scoffs. “What friends? The ones you ghosted when you left?”
She isn’t wrong.
“Nico, Rowan, and Luca,” I tell her.
“Why?”
“Because I missed them.”
“You left.”
“I know, and I told them why,” I say.
She laughs dryly. Wrong thing to say, I guess. Her dry laugh gets louder, turning into a terrifying real laugh. “They know but I have never gotten an explanation?”
I shake my head and take a step forward. “No, you deserve an explanation—I know. That’s why I’m here—”
Lana sizes me up though, ready for a fight. “I don’t see you or hear from you in four years, but you come storming into town in that ridiculously fancy suit, looking like that—”
I smirk, even though I know I shouldn’t. “Like what?”
“Like that—Shut up!”
The smirk drops instantly. “Lana…Baby, please.”
“No,” she snaps, her nostrils flare and her face is red with rage. “Don’t you dare call me that.”
I sigh and stuff my hands in my pockets. Lana stares up at me and I can tell she wants to scream at me, maybe hit me. Even if she did, it wouldn’t be enough—at least not for me.
I want her to be angry, I deserve it. But I think I deserve much worse after everything I’ve put her through. For all the different ways I’ve hurt her.
Lana swallows and her tense posture smooths out when her shoulders drop. “I’m going home,” she says, and walks around me, down the block.
I follow after her. “Lana, you’re not walking home alone at this time.”
She scoffs and her pace picks up. “This town is harmless.”
“I’m not letting you walk home.”
She walks even quicker, her arms wrapped around herself. “You don’t even know where I live, and if you follow me I’ll call the police.”
“Lana, let me drive you. Please.”
“No.”
“I’ll only follow you to make sure you get there safely.”
“Wow, my lifelong dream was to have a stalker,” she deadpans, still walking.
“Lana—”
She stops suddenly and turns around, and I nearly trample her. “What are you doing?”
I shift on my feet, looking down at them and the leather shoes. My hands curl into fists in my pockets. “I’m trying.”
“Why?”
“Because…” I still love her. And maybe it’s impossible and unreasonable after four years, but not for me. She’s still as fiery as she was then. She is still her.
“I’m gonna go,” Lana says softly. Soft enough that it hurts more than the yelling.
I follow her down the block until we approach my car. She doesn’t know it’s mine and I have a feeling she’ll make fun of it too once she does. I let her walk ahead while I get in my car.
I drive along side her, as slow as her walking pace, and lower the passenger side window. “Lana, get in.”
She stops, gaping at the car. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Lana, get in please,” I sigh. “Stop being stubborn.”
“When you stop being annoying.”
“Lana.”
“Christian.”
That’s the first time I hear her say my name in four years, and I think it makes me sick. It makes me hate myself a little more.
I remember all the ways she used to say it.
She used to sing it with a skip when I picked her up at work or her apartment before she jumped so I could catch her around the waist. She used to moan it in my ear or against my lips when I touched her and kissed her and made love to her.
She used to breathe it against my neck when she held me after I had a bad day.
She used to cry it when I came home a mess.
Lana keeps walking and I follow whether she likes it or not because I’m going to make sure she gets home safe. I miss driving her home, having her in the front seat and holding her thigh just to remind myself she is here and real and next to me.
“Would you stop?” Lana stomps her foot and keeps walking.
“No,” I growl. “Get in, it’s cold.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“No, you won’t,” I say. “You break out into hives when you’re too cold, Lana.”
She groans like she hates that I remember things about her. But I’ve known her like the back of my hand for years. You don’t just forget the back of your hand. And you certainly don’t just forget her.
“Shut up,” she says.
“Get in, and I promise I’ll stay quiet.”
Lana stops so I stomp on the brake. Another groan but this time, she’s turning and walking toward the car. She swings open the door and grumbles, “Your car is ridiculous, by the way.”