by Lauren Layne
“Now, hold on,” I say, stepping toward her. “I’ll take some blame, but not all the blame. Those things you wrote—”
“Were angry, childish stream-of-consciousness nonsense, Reece!” she says. “And you don’t get to be mad. In the same way you used Abby to keep me at a distance so I couldn’t hurt you, I was bracing myself for the hurt. Telling myself that I only wanted a summer fling, because on some level I knew that was all you’d ever give me.”
I glance upward, my heart wanting so damn bad to believe her, even as my brain screams not to risk it.
“What’s so broken inside of you that you won’t let me fix it?” she asks quietly. “Why can’t you believe that I care about you? That we can make this work?”
I need to get out of here. I take a step backward, away from her, shaking my head. “Go home, Lucy.”
She swallows and lifts her chin. “And give you what you want? Proof that I’ll leave, just like your mom. Your dad. Your sister. Everyone leaves, is that it? And you’re just waiting for me to do the same.”
She’s so dead-on it nearly brings me to my knees, and I take another step back.
“Don’t lump me in with your family, Reece. They left, of their own will or not, but you let me leave. Hell, you more or less pushed me. And I walked away, and I don’t love that I did. But you’re just as bad. You didn’t come after me, and that’s on you.”
“Go. Home.” I snarl it as I turn away.
“Reece, please—”
I keep walking.
“Reece!”
I hear the tears in her voice and expect them.
What I don’t expect is the way my own tears come when I finally hear her drive away.
Chapter 41
LUCY, NINETEEN, REECE, TWENTY
Reece paced impatiently by the park bench he’d been sitting on for the better part of an hour.
He purposely didn’t look at anyone. Didn’t want to see anyone staring at him like he didn’t belong.
He already knew he didn’t belong.
College had never been in the cards for Reece, and standing on the campus now, he felt like the worst kind of imposter.
It’s worth it. It’ll all be worth it when you see her.
It was creepy. He knew that. He’d practically stalked her. But just as in high school, Lucy was sparkly and involved in every possible activity in college. She’d made friends with every single person.
People knew her. It hadn’t taken long before he found someone who told him she’d just gone into the library with a study group.
All he had to do was wait.
And wait.
And wait.
Must be quite the study group.
To occupy the time, Reece pulled out the crumpled piece of paper where he’d written down everything that he wanted to tell her.
He clenched the paper tightly. He’d written his heart on this damn paper. No way was he going to let the evening breeze whisk it away.
It held everything he needed to say.
Sorry, obviously. Forgive me, definitely.
I love you.
He swallowed, read the words, mentally practiced saying them to Lucy.
I love you, Lucy. I’ve always loved you. Please give me another chance.
His eyes stung a little as he realized what a long shot it was.
The library door opened, and Reece’s head came up at the sound of a familiar voice, his chest tightening when he saw her.
She was waving goodbye to another girl, laughing at whatever the girl called back.
Reece stared, willing Lucy to look his way. She didn’t.
Instead she turned and talked to the skinny red-haired guy beside her.
Reece checked his watch, and waited for them to finish coordinating homework, or whatever the hell they were doing.
After a few minutes, his impatience turned to panic. The kid was standing way too close, and Lucy’s smile was way too friendly.
No. No!
Reece resisted the urge to howl as he watched the guy bend down to Lucy.
Kissed her. Another guy was kissing his girl.
Reece swallowed the lump in his throat, reminding himself it was only fair. She’d seen Abby kissing him. He hadn’t told her otherwise.
It was good that she’d moved on. Good that she was happy.
The stinging of his eyes was turning to a full-on burn, and he cleared his throat quickly as he turned away, crumpling the piece of paper in his fist.
There was a garbage can next to Reece’s car.
He tossed the letter in it. Right along with his heart.
Chapter 42
Lucy
“Okay, tell me again how it went down with Reece. Word for word. In excruciating detail.”
I pull the cork from the half-empty chardonnay bottle with my teeth since one hand’s holding my cellphone, the other’s buried in the box of Wheat Thins that is my dinner.
“I love that idea, Brandi, I do,” I tell my sister. “The only part I’m not clear on is, if I tell you all of that before I throw myself on top of a kitchen knife or after. I’m not sure which would hurt less.”
My sister doesn’t even pause, bloodthirsty wench. “How can you move past it if you won’t even talk about it? It’s been what, a week?”
Nine days.
My new job? Fabulous. New apartment? Starting to feel like home.
My heart? In shards.
I don’t want to move past it. I want to wallow in the memories of me and Reece together.
But…but…this is why I called tough-love Brandi. I have a couple of high school friends who know Reece, a bunch of college friends who don’t, but nobody besides my sister knows the whole story.
“It was pretty much like you’d expect,” I say glumly, washing down a cracker with the creamy wine. “He told me he more or less manufactured the entire mess with Abby back in the day because he didn’t have the balls to break up with me directly.”
“Sooooooo, I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess that those weren’t his precise words?” Brandi asks.
I throw myself onto the couch. “I may be paraphrasing. But the gist is the same. He’s a big coward who couldn’t handle the fact that I was going to college, so he ditched me before I could ditch him. Fast-forward a few years. Repeat.”
“But you weren’t going to ditch him, then or now,” Brandi says reasonably. “Right?”
“Not even close,” I say quietly. “I mean, I knew we’d have to do long distance, but I also thought I was going to marry him. It took me close to a year to get over him. It’ll take me even longer now that I know the man’s even better than the boy.”
There’s a moment of silence.
“It took him just as long to get over you.”
I roll my eyes. “I doubt that.”
“You doubt that, but you don’t know that. Honestly, Lucy, you don’t know anything because you haven’t asked him. Nor have you told him how you felt then, or how you feel now.”
“I don’t know how I feel now.”
Brandi’s voice is kinder than I expect, but also a little disappointed. “Lucy.”
I squeeze my eyes shut and stay silent.
“Luce…do you love him?”
Just hearing the words, even through my iPhone, from someone on the other side of the country, makes my stomach flip.
Love and Reece…they go together almost as well as the words hate and Reece. Hurt and Reece. Anger and Reece…
“Luce?”
“Yes, I love him. Okay? Happy?”
Boom.
I’d thought I’d feel better once the words were out, but I don’t. Because I’m not saying them to the right person.
And Brandi doesn’t give an inch. “You’re hideous right now. You need to get him back.”
I sit up. “What? No! He needs to get me back. He’s the one who messed everything up back then, letting me think he cheated. He’s the one who pushed me away.”
“And you let him.”
“What do you want me to do, chase him down? Fall on my knees and beg him to love me?”
“No, but how about you have a rational conversation with the guy, lay it all out there, because you’re an adult? And crazy in love with the one guy who’s always been the only guy?”
I scratch my nose. My little sister is super annoying when she’s right.
And yet, I can’t stop thinking of the look on his face when he stepped away from me. It was so…final.
I don’t doubt that Reece cares for me. And I know that he wants me, or at least he did when I was within easy reach.
But love?
I’m not even sure Reece Sullivan knows what it means.
“Has anyone heard from him?” I ask, hating myself for being so desperate to hear something about him. Anything.
“Nope, no way,” Brandi says. “Sorry, but I’m not making this that easy for you. You want to know how he is, you want to know where his head’s at, you go to him.”
“I can’t. I don’t know what I’d say.”
“So figure it out,” my sister says, her voice gentling. “You and Reece belong together. I know you were gone for a while, but I was here more often, and I saw him with the girlfriends he had while you two were apart. He barely even looked at them.”
I wince at the thought of Reece and other girls. “Can we not go there?”
“If you guys are going to make this work, you’ll have to come to grips with what happened when you were together, as well as when you weren’t,” Brandi says, sounding way wiser than she has any right to. “And besides, you had boyfriends in the meantime.”
“I know,” I say, nibbling on a fingernail. “Reece oh so kindly reminded me of that the other night, as though he gets to be jealous after what he pulled with Abby back in the day.”
“Well to be fair, you did make him drive to Miami to meet that Oscar dude.”
“It wasn’t even Oscar that had him all riled,” I say, swirling my wine. “It was Matt Terry, of all people.”
“Who?”
“Exactly!” I say, lifting my glass emphatically, almost swishing some over the side.
“No really, who is Matt Terry?”
“He was this guy who pursued me freshman year at college. I was trying to give Matt a chance, desperate to move on from Reece, but all it took was one horrible kiss and I knew I couldn’t go through with it. I broke up with the poor guy before our first date.”
“Yikes. I’ve never heard this story.”
I shrug. “Nobody has. It was sort of one those blink-and-you-miss-it moments of my life.”
I take another sip of wine, then another, noticing Brandi’s silence is longer than usual. “You still there?”
“Lucy.”
I gesture impatiently with my glass even though she can’t see me. “Yeah?”
“You’ve never told anyone about Matt Terry?”
I scrunch my nose, wondering why we’re still talking about a poor kid I barely remember. “No, I don’t think so. I thought about telling my roommate, but I didn’t want to embarrass the poor guy. He was sweet. Not Matt’s fault I was still hung up on The Asshole. Let’s start calling Reece that now, ’kay?”
My sister refuses to play along with my game, her voice more urgent now. “Lucy, if you never told a soul about what happened with this Matt guy, how did Reece know?”
I open my mouth to respond, and then realize I don’t have an answer.
“This kiss, the bad one with Matt,” Brandi rushes on. “Where did it happen?”
“I don’t know, outside the library?” I think, trying to remember, my heart racing with something that feels important. “How would Reece have known about that?”
“He wouldn’t. Unless he saw it.”
“How would he see it, unless…”
My sister makes a triumphant whooping noise. “He did follow you. He came after you to win you back, saw you making out with another dude. It’s the only explanation. Like, literally the only one. Right?”
I want to tell her she’s wrong. But racking my brain, I realize she has to be right. The only other explanation is that he somehow connected with Matt, who’s the only other person who knows about the kiss. But that’s even more far-fetched.
But either way, it meant that Reece cared.
He came after me.
The thought warms me from the inside out, and my hand is shaking just a little as I put my glass on the coffee table.
“I’ve gotta go,” I tell Brandi.
“Why. Where are you going?”
“He came after me once,” I say, standing up, already moving toward my purse. “Time for me to go after him.”
Chapter 43
Reece
Okay, guys, I don’t mean to rush you here, but keep up, because sometimes a dude’s mind is super simple and works exactly like this.
It took me about five minutes after Lucy let me go the last time to know that I wanted her back.
It took me nine days to figure out how the fuck to do it.
You want a long drawn-out story of how I realized it? It was as simple as seeing that car’s fucking taillights drive away from me and realizing I wanted to die. Realizing that I’d risk all the world’s heartache, risk her leaving eventually, if it meant I’d get to hold her for just five minutes more.
I lift my hand to knock on Lucy’s door, then drop my arm again, wiping my damp palm against my jeans.
This plan didn’t seem nearly so terrifying when I talked it over with Craig.
Show up. Tell her how you feel. Hope like hell she feels the same way.
Easy.
And…I think I’m going to barf.
I take a deep breath and lift my hand again, refusing to let myself chicken out the way I’ve been doing for the past six years.
Lucy Hawkins was my girl. Now she’s my woman. And I’m her man.
She’d better start getting used to the idea.
The door opens before my knuckles can make contact, and I have only a second to register movement before her small body hurls into my chest.
“Oh,” she says on an exhale, taking a quick step back. “I’m so sorr— Reece?”
For a moment, I can only stare. She’s so…Lucy. Tight-fitting black shirt, white skirt, flip-flops, hair in a messy knot on top of her head.
She’s beautiful. So damn beautiful I can’t breathe.
“Hi.”
She blinks, then her eyebrows go up at the exact moment she plants a hand on her hip. “Hi?”
I swallow. Shit. Craig said it would get easier once I got started. Fucking liar.
I swallow again and fist my hands to keep from pulling her toward me, resisting the urge to tell her how I feel with a kiss instead of words.
She deserves the words. She deserves all of it.
“Can I come in?” I ask.
“Um.”
For the first time, I realize that she seems a little off. Her surprise at seeing me has faded, but there’s still something a little wild and desperate in her eyes.
It’s an expression I’ve learned well over the past week from seeing it in my own mirror.
“Please,” I say quietly. “I have things I need to say to you.”
She steps to the side so I can come in, shutting the door behind me.
I look her over more closely now, noticing the purse in her hand. “You were headed out.”
She nods and doesn’t meet my eyes, and for a heart-stopping moment, I wonder if she was headed out on a date.
Not so long ago, the thought would have made me run for the hills, wanting to bury my head in the sand before the bulk of the pain hit me.
Now it only makes me want to fight. Fight for what’s mine.
“I signed up for some classes,” I blurt out.
She frowns a little. “Okay. What kind of classes. Like, how not to be an asshole?”
I laugh, because it’s such a Lucy thing to say.
“Wine classes. Winemaking, wine marketing, wine t
asting. Whatever fit into my work schedule.”
She goes a little still. “Thought you hated all that. Thought the only way to learn was eating the dirt, or whatever.”
I smile. “Hands-on is still important. The most important, I’d say. But I’ve…I’ve been thinking about what you said. Thinking about what I want out of my life, and I don’t just want to be the guy drifting through the days from paycheck to paycheck.”
“Okay.” She sets her purse carefully on the floor and crosses her arms. “And what do you want?”
I take a step toward her, gaining courage now. Not because I’m not terrified of the power her one-woman army has over my heart, but because I know the answer to her question with absolute certainty.
I’m tired of being the man who runs. Tired of being that guy who won’t reach for something worthwhile because I’m scared it’ll disappear.
“I don’t know what my future looks like,” I say, my voice low and clear. “Maybe lead winemaker at one of the big names. Maybe it’s my own winery. Hell, maybe I’ll get struck by lightning and realize I like selling the stuff as much as I like making it. Maybe I’ll start my own tasting room, or invent some type of aging barrel, or…”
Lucy laughs a little, and holds up her hand. “Wow. Big plans there, Sullivan.”
“Endgame,” I blurt out.
Her smile fades. “What?”
I step closer now. Her eyes go wary, but my heart surges with hope that she won’t take a step back. “You asked me what my endgame was.”
“And you’ve figured it out?” she asks.
“Not with the job, no, but I’m getting there. Things are starting to feel…clear.”
“Well,” she says, forcing a smile. “I’m glad. You’re meant for great things, I’ve always known that, even if you didn’t.”
“I know,” I say a little roughly. “But the thing is, the endgame you asked me about…my career goals…they’re important. But they’re not most important.”
“They aren’t?” she whispers as my hands reach for her, settling carefully on her waist. Touching her feels so right my knees nearly buckle, and I gain courage.
“I’ve made some mistakes with my life, Lucy. Most of them with you. I’ve hurt you, I let you leave, I left you, I didn’t come after you, I’ve picked on you, I’ve snapped at you…”
