Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
SAbrINA
I didn’t have to see Cal to know where he was. I felt him as soon as I walked out of the hotel. This had always been the magic of Cal. As if he were a proton and I an electron, our opposite charges created an irresistible force of attraction, drawing us together like two halves of a whole.
Without looking over my shoulder, I said, “Why are you here? Gonna make sure I leave your town?”
“Why would you stay?”
“Precisely. My daddy didn’t raise a fool.” I stopped, feet from the porte-cochère, set down my carry-on bag, and surveyed the street for a taxi. My backup plan was an Uber.
Cal cleared his throat before he spoke, his voice so low I almost didn’t hear him. “I was sorry to hear about Travis passing.”
I pressed my lips together and swallowed because, even five years later, it still hurt to think about my dad’s death. He had been my last living relative. He had been my rock.
Pushing back my grief, I hid it by adding bite to my words. “Funny how I knew nothing about you. I didn’t know you had a company or if you’d married or not. I never once googled your name.” I looked over my shoulder. “I can see that’s not true for you. You were the one that left. Why do you care?”
“I did say I was sorry. You know, back then.”
With one exhalation, my grief was replaced by fury. I swiveled, leaving my bag behind, giving him a cold stare as I marched the handful of steps toward him. He had tucked himself off to the side where the shadows gathered and made it difficult for him to be seen through the lobby windows.
When I was barely a foot away I jabbed him in the chest with my finger to punctuate my every word. “‘I’m sorry, Reenie, this isn’t gonna work. It’s best if we go our own ways, Reenie.’ That’s what you think counts as an apology? That’s not an apology—that’s a cop-out. You used ‘I’m sorry’ like a buffer, hoping it would somehow make things better, but it didn’t work.”
He looked down at my poking finger.
“There I am, thinking we’re about to get married. I’m on top of the world, then you show up to say we have to go our own ways when just a few hours earlier we were picking out rings.”
The tip of my finger began to throb from the contact, so I flat-palm slapped him square in the solar plexus. He didn’t even flinch. I pulled back, preparing to land another. He grabbed my hand, his large one swallowing mine, and held tight. Using his hold, he jerked me closer. Neither of us moved as we stared each other down.
“Stop slapping me,” he growled.
“You’re more solid than you used to be in college.” Solid was an understatement. The man’s chest was like a Kevlar vest, tight and hard.
His lips twitched. “A lot less beer pong and far more weight lifting.”
I continued to hold his gaze. His eyes were dark and dangerous, a look unfamiliar to me that reflected what I felt: a blue-flame heat burning me from my very center. He’d always made me feel that way. I was surprised he still felt it too.
“Beer pong requires you to be agile and quick. That’s probably really hard to do with the pole up your hole.”
“You keep bringing up this stick. What’s with the fascination of my backside?”
“You’re an asshole.” I tried to jerk away my hand.
He held tight. “I know.”
“Do you not think I deserve to know why, in a span of two hours, everything changed for us?” The space between us was as wide as my forearm.
He still held my fist in his. Energy crackled, causing the hairs on my arms to rise. At the point where we connected, our hands hummed and vibrated. If we’d been energy sticks, we’d have had a meltdown, with so much highly charged current flowing between us.
“It doesn’t matter why.” His gaze fell to my lips.
So mine did the same to his, and I was instantly vibrating with a need to rise up on my toes and flick my tongue across his lips. I tried to focus on the conversation. “It mattered to me.”
“But in the big picture, it doesn’t matter. It was just something that had to be done.”
We were talking to each other’s mouths.
I tugged my fist, trying to dislodge it from his hand again. “It came out of nowhere. And you think I was supposed to shrug and move on?”
He tugged back and brought me closer, my bent arm the only thing between us. Slowly, his gaze traveled back up to meet mine. “But it didn’t come out of nowhere. Come on, you know things weren’t perfect between us, Reenie. Did it not bother you that I never introduced you to my family?”
Hearing the nickname slip easily from his lips—a nickname given to me by my parents—dredged up another wave of achy longing, reminding me once more what I’d lost.
“You don’t get to call me that anymore.” I pulled against him.
He held steady.
I narrowed my eyes. “You said you were estranged. I believed you. Should I not have? Besides, no relationship is perfect, and it wasn’t my idea to run off to Vegas—it was yours. So tell me why you would do that if you weren’t sure.”
That made him look away.
We continued to play our push-pull game. Any passerby might pause and question my safety. But I didn’t feel scared. I was angry that he talked in riddles, never answering my questions.
“Why did you come, Reenie?” he asked, his voice gravelly. He shifted to lean more toward me.
I pressed my lips into a thin line and glared at him. He was using my nickname to disarm me, to try to melt me into a puddle that he could scoop up and do whatever he wished with.
Well, I was not going to have any of that. I needed to get away. My resolve was wavering again, and I wasn’t sure what I would do next. Crying seemed impending and unavoidable. I had one move he’d never expect. I stomped on his foot, making sure to avoid jabbing my heel into him. I was going for distraction more than pain, and my aim was true.
Cal swore as he thrust me away then reached for his foot. But because he’d pulled me close and had been holding my hand, I suddenly found myself off-balance and teetering backward. I tried to adjust by stepping back and windmilling my arms, but the momentum pushing me backwards was stronger than my correction.
“Oh,” I called as I reached for something, anything, and found the front of his shirt, clutching it in my fist.
His arms snaked out and caught me, and together we shifted, so I crashed into Cal.
“Oof.”
“What was that for?” he growled over my head, his arms tight around me.
I was up against his chest, surrounded by him, overwhelmed with the memory and familiarity of what he felt like pressed to me. Yep, I was going to cry. All of these feelings and memories were too much.
I was acutely aware of how alone I really felt, how long it had been since I’d had a hug that was all-encompassing. How long I’d gone without romantic affection and even sex. Here I was, not really being hugged but held, and I wanted more.
“I’m all done here.” I straightened and pressed my palms against his chest to push out of his arms. “The ten years have changed you. You’ve become hard.”
“In my line of business, I had to change. I have to be fit.”
That was not what I’d meant, and he knew that. I tilted my head and studied him. “This plan your PR guy has is a good one. I think you know that, but I think trust issues are at play here.”
He put his foot down and pushed off the wall, coming closer to me. “I trust Paul immensely. Even though I think a love expert and me dating is a stupid idea.”
I chuckled. “I’m talking about you trusting Paul. Jace says your dad is behind this. He has some powerful alliances and is using them against you. I think that’s why you don’t trust yourself. You’re emotionally involved.”
Cal scoffed. His eyes darted from the cab back to me, and he opened his mouth to say something, then shook his head and stuffed his hands into his pockets.
I turned and went back to my overnight bag. Then I stepped toward the street and waved at an approaching taxi. The car pulled to a stop in front of me. I opened the door and moved to get in, stopping to look at Cal one last time. There was something cathartic in being the one doing the leaving this time.
“Take care of yourself, Reenie,” he said quietly.
I didn’t know what to say to that. I could read a million things into those five words. Could that be regret?
“Good luck to you. You’re going to need it. If you don’t pull your head out of your ass and fight back, then you’ve already been beaten.” I got into the car.
I meant what I’d said. Events in his world looked to be spiraling out of control, and he didn’t have his hand at the helm. I didn’t want a front-row seat to watch him crash and burn. I would be too busy trying to stitch up my wound, which seeing him had reopened.
I did need to get a life. But to do so, I had to really and truly let him go, because if I’d learned one thing from this whole event, I’d still been holding on to the dream of him. Not anymore.