14. Serena
SERENA
When you apologize for your emotions, you’re apologizing for your existence.
Own your feelings.
—Serena’s Daily Affirmation
“Serena . . .” His heavy footsteps behind me are all the warning I get before Hendrix and his ridiculously long legs eat up the distance between us. “Serena, stop.”
“Why would I?” I bite back without turning to look at him. My sole focus is on getting further away from the wedding with every step, fully aware I’m not actually escaping anything.
“Well for starters, are you planning on getting lost among the vines?” he asks, sarcasm heavy as I step off the cobblestone pathway into the vineyard itself. “There’s a few hundred acres out here, princess, and you’ve never been good with directions.”
“Fuck you,” I mumble, refusing to slow down.
I’m not about to create a scene in front of my entire family.
Moving as quickly as possible with my four-inch heels sinking into the soft soil beneath my feet, I navigate the well-worn path.
“Thanks for your concern, Hendrix, but I own this whole damn vineyard and live on the edge of the property to the north. You might get lost, but I won’t. ”
“You what?” he asks, his footsteps faltering as I grin and spin toward him, soaking in his shock and maybe enjoying it a little bit.
It’s a whole lot easier to focus on that instead of how good he looks in his charcoal-gray suit with that stupid crisp white shirt that, even after all these years, still makes my mouth water. Damn him for aging like a fine wine.
If he looks like this at nearly thirty, I can only imagine what the next ten years will do for him.
Whatever. Fuck this. And fuck that whole train of thought.
And fuck him too, for that matter.
Yup. Fuck him too.
Feisty feels better than sad. So I’m going to cling to that bitch.
“You don’t get to be shocked. You don’t know me anymore.” My voice cracks, betraying the hurt wrapped in my anger. “Just leave me alone, Hendrix. I don’t want to do this.”
“I can’t do that, Serena.” He takes a step closer, I’d guess battling his own demons, and I slowly shake my head in warning.
I’m proud that I haven’t completely lost my shit yet. Heavy emphasis on yet. The string of sanity I’m currently clinging to is fraying faster than the last loose thread of my favorite cashmere sweater.
“You seem to have done a pretty goddamned good job for the past few years. Let’s just pretend we didn’t see each other tonight and go back to being strangers,” I tell him, somewhere between a whisper and a savage growl.
“Because this,”—I point between us—“this doesn’t need to happen.
This fight. It’s pointless. It won’t change anything.
It won’t make it better. We can’t be friends. ”
Hendrix’s crystalline-blue eyes lock on me like a heat-seeking missile, fierce and fiery and pissed as hell. “And what if that’s not good enough?”
“It has to be,” I tell him, grabbing hold of my fury and letting it fuel me.
It’s a far safer option than crying. “You don’t get to come back and act like I mean anything to you.
Not after three years. So stop. Stop popping up.
Stop stopping by. Stop trying to be my damn hero.
I don’t need one. I’ve done okay all by myself, in case you hadn’t noticed. So. Just. Stop.”
“You don’t get to tell me what you mean to me, Serena.”
“Meant,” I correct him. “What I meant to you.” The emotion working its way up my throat threatens to choke me.
All of it.
Hurt. Pain. Heartache. It all fucking sucks, and I refuse to give it power over me.
Not now. Not again. “You made your choice, and it wasn’t me.”
“Are you fucking kidding me, Serena? You said no.”
And there it is.
The thing he’ll never get over.
I said no.
It doesn’t matter what my reasons were.
It doesn’t matter that he wasn’t listening.
It doesn’t matter how badly I wish I could have said yes.
I said no.
“Fuck you, Hendrix.” Tears burn the backs of my eyes. Tears I refuse to let fall as I take one step closer, then another until I’m so close, I can taste the sweet red wine on his breath.
I have no doubt he can feel every shake of my body as I vibrate with anger and hurt.
“I said no . . . and you married someone else,” I whisper, the first heated sob tearing from the darkest depths of my fucking soul.
“You had a baby,” I cry, the crack in my heart splitting wide open until it’s a chasm. “With someone else.”
My chest hurts. My heart hurts. My head hurts.
“You had a baby . . . Less than a year after I said no, you had a baby.”
It’s agony. This . . . This is agony.
I tuck my hair behind my ears, not bothering to wipe the falling tears.
Let him see them.
Let him see the pain.
Let him fucking feel it.
“You fell in love with someone else. You did. You broke your promise. We broke us. But you . . . you broke me.” I take one last impossible step closer, without even knowing why.
“I don’t deny you your happiness. You’re a good man, Hendrix.
You deserve to be happy. Britt deserved to be happy.
And I’m so sorry you lost her. I’m so sorry you have to figure out how to live in this world without her.
I’m sorry your son has to. I never would have wished that on you or her or him.
But don’t act like you’re not the one who moved on first—”
He erases any distance left between us, his body pressing so closely to mine, the heat bleeds through his suit and my dress, trapping the air in my lungs without ever laying a finger on my body. “I didn’t.”
His voice is firm and calm, two things I absolutely do not feel at the moment.
Especially now as confusion fogs my brain.
“What?” My head swims, and the world around me tilts on its axis, the starry night sky suddenly blurring above me.
Hendrix raises his hands like he’s coddling a wounded animal, which is exactly what I am. A wounded fucking animal balancing on the edge of a sword.
Tip it one way, and I run away.
Tip it the other, and I might just claw his eyes out.
“I don’t understand,” I finally snap, keeping my balance as I choose my next move.
“I never fell in love with someone else, Serena.” Hesitantly, his thumbs trace the curve of my cheek, and I close my eyes, unable to focus on the intimate gesture. “Fuck. It would have been so much easier if I had.”
“Don’t rewrite history, Hendrix,” I plead, my hands trembling, unsure whether I can take this new unimaginable version. “You married her. She had your baby. She was your best friend, and then she was your wife. That doesn’t happen without love.”
His eyes trace every line of my face, searching for something.
Something I doubt he’ll find.
“I always loved her, Serena. But I was never in love with her.” My heart skips a beat, hearing those words I’d longed to hear for fucking years, only they’re too little, too late. “I don’t want to do this here. But if we don’t, you’re going to bolt, aren’t you?”
“Probably,” I laugh, and it’s small and weak and born of frustration and pain.
“I owe you so much, princess. But I’m so fucking tired.” And that’s when I see it, the same exhaustion that’s plaguing me reflecting back in the shadows beneath his eyes.
I fight the overwhelming urge to lean in. To give in. To ask for more.
But that won’t fix it. It won’t fix us.
We’re beyond fixing.
So why put ourselves through more pain?
“We don’t have to do this,” I whisper as I place my hands on his chest and push back, trying to push out of his arms. “I’m not sure I want to do this, to be honest. Have this fight.
Know these truths.” The last words are barely a whisper in the wind, but they hurt all the same. “I’m not sure I can.”
Hendrix battles an internal war.
It’s written on every line of his handsome face.
His tense muscles and tight jaw.
The shadows in his narrowed eyes.
I may wish I didn’t, but I know this man. Every inch. Every touch. Every sound.
I knew him . . . until I didn’t.
“Bodhi’s not mine.” His words hang heavy between us as I blink, my lashes freezing against my hot cheeks while I try to process what he just said—because there’s no way I heard him right. I couldn’t have.
The pressure in my chest tightens as the anvil sitting on it presses harder.
No. That’s not possible.
“You can’t—” I shake my head, memories flooding my system.
That call.
That night.
Those words.
“You don’t get to change the narrative now to suit your needs,” I finally snap, refusing to fall into this trap where I end up back at square one, broken, with my heart crushed again.
“I asked you, Hendrix. I asked you point-blank. I asked if it was true. If the baby was yours. If Bodhi was yours.” My hands shake as I rip my heels out of the sinking soft ground beneath me and step back, needing his hands off me.
Desperate for control. “What the fuck? Why would you even say that?”
“Serena—”
“No. No. No . . . No. You don’t get to change the story now. You told me he was yours. You married Britt. After how many years of telling me she was just a friend, you married her. She had your baby. And you told me he was yours. You said it happened after the first round of playoffs. You—”
Hendrix reaches for me, but I slap his hands away and stumble back on my damn heels.
Fuck this.
I kick them off and pick them up, not giving a shit that my feet are likely to get torn apart.
“Why?” I push against his chest. “If it’s not true, then why?
Why would you say that? Why would you do this?
” Each word is louder than the last until they’re bordering on a sob.
Teetering on the edge of hysteria. Because if it’s true .
. . If we could have worked through it but he chose to lie . . . “Why?”
He catches my wrist as I raise my hand to shove him again and pulls me closer.
“Because. You. Said. No.”
“Don’t you dare put this on me.” I yank my hand back, but Hendrix refuses to drop it.
And in that second I’m stuck staring at him, it becomes harder to ignore the glassy heartbreak in his eyes.
I’ve only seen him like this once before.
“You’re serious . . . I don’t understand.
” I sound like a broken fucking record. “You married her because I said no? Fine. But that still makes that beautiful little boy yours. Don’t you dare—”
“Christ, Serena. Bodhi is mine. He always will be. In every way that matters. For every single day of the rest of my life—of his life—he’s mine.”
I watch for a tell. For a way to know he’s lying. But there is none. Because unless he’s become a father and an incredible master manipulator since we were together, Hendrix Sinclair is telling the truth.
“But biologically . . . fuck.” The corded muscles in his neck strain with tension as he looks quickly to the stars before bringing his watery gaze back to mine. “He’s not mine. I never slept with Britt.”
He drops my wrist and wraps one hand around my head, his fingers sliding through my hair. “Listen to that again, princess. Listen to me again and hear my words. I. Never. Slept. With. My. Wife.”