I clench my jaw in the silence of the ride, willing myself not to cry. I almost make it too, but when the doors open on the first floor, I can’t move.
“Everything okay?” Leo’s voice is laced with hesitant concern.
“Yes. Fine,” I say, but the words end on a sob, and I burst into tears.
He rests a big hand on my shoulder and lets me cry. The three of us ride the elevator together. Me crying harder with every passing second, Leo trying to comfort me, and Declan pressing the close button and barking “take the stairs” to anyone else trying to get on.
I fucked up. I fucked up so badly. Johnny may have dealt the final blow, but I put us in this position. Me and Johnny Maverick? We don’t make any sense. We’re too different.
When we get to the first floor a second time, neither guy gets off. I hold up my hand to stop the doors from closing. “Thank you. I’m good now.”
They still don’t make a move to get off the elevator. “Are you sure?” Leo asks. “Do you want me to call Johnny?”
“No,” I say quickly and shake my head. “No. I’m okay. Thanks, guys.”
With a nod, they exit. Just in time, too, because I start to cry all over again when the doors close between us.
I call Reagan, tears running down my face as my best friend’s concerned gaze fills the screen.
“Oh, honey,” she says, then her features harden. “Who do I need to kill?”
“Me. I fucked everything up.”
“I’m booking a flight.” She stands from the bed. The familiarity of it all tugs at my emotions.
“No, don’t. I’m coming home.”
Her smile is tinged with sadness. “You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
“Okay,” she says. “I’ll be here.”
37
Johnny
Jack tries to take my empty glass from me to refill it, but I motion to the bottle in his hand. “Don’t be stingy.”
“Are you sure she left?” he asks after handing over the half-empty bottle of Don Julio.
“The only thing left in her room is the furniture,” I say.
I was at the jewelry store trying to pick out a ring when Declan called to say that he and Leo had seen her in the elevator crying, and I just knew. By the time I got back to the apartment, she was gone. I came here, not really sure where to go or what to do. It’s all my fucking fault.
“I couldn’t keep it to myself for one more week,” I say. I feel like someone reached in and ripped out my heart, stomped on it, and then tried to put it back.
“What did compel you to post a picture of her mostly naked except those little red shoes, obviously in bed with you.”
“Stupidity. Maybe love.”
“Hand in hand, my friend.”
“Where do you think she went?”
“If I had to guess, Valley. Maybe Kansas to see her dad.”
“Did you call her?”
“About a hundred times.” I drink from the bottle, spilling a lot of it on my bare chest. No idea where my shirt went. I think I ripped it off and said something about not being able to contain my emotions. I’m a sad case. I can’t believe she left. All I got was a Dear Johnny note that said Thanks for a great summer.
“Okay. Now you’re not even making it in your mouth.” He takes the bottle back from me. “I’ve got some Patron around here somewhere if you’re just going to waste it.”
“What do I do, captain?”
“You’re asking me?”
“Couldn’t hurt.”
“Forget about her. Focus on hockey. Want me to call some girls?”
“Scratch that. Worst advice ever. Got any Mad Dog?”
“Yeah.” He laughs. “I bought a couple of bottles.”
“Really?” I hadn’t expected him to say yes. “You really are a good captain, stocking your boys’ favorite drinks.”
He brings me a bottle of MD 20/20. “Never know when you’re going to have to step in with words of wisdom and booze.”
“So far, your words of wisdom are shit.”
“Yeah, I do better when it’s related to hockey. Hence the booze.”
I unscrew the cap and take a long drink. It doesn’t hit the same way, and I groan. “I’ve lost the ability to taste.”
“Oh geez.” Jack runs a hand through his hair. “I might need to call in reinforcements.”
Ash and Leo show up next. They live in the neighborhood, just down the street. They show their support with sad smiles and drinking in solidarity. Ash offers to take me to the strip club. I accost Leo for every detail about his interaction with Dakota earlier.
By the time I’ve finished the bottle of Mad Dog, the party is huge. When girls start trying to cheer me up by sitting in my lap, I’m out.
Declan offers me a sober ride back to the apartment, and I accept it. He drives my SUV and says he’ll come get his motorcycle tomorrow.
“You’ll have your vehicle in case you decide to go after her,” he says. “But promise me you’ll wait twelve hours or so and let the alcohol ooze out of your system.”
“Promise.” I hold up my pinky, but he doesn’t link his with mine like Heath would have. I miss him. I miss Dakota. I miss my life before I screwed everything up. What was so wrong with being her secret slam piece? At least then I had her to go home to.
Inside, I grab Charli and we lie on the god-awful pink couch. Charli jumps down with a whine and jogs around as if she’s looking for Kota.
“We’ll get her back,” I promise her and pat my chest until she hops back up to keep me company. “Somehow.”
I call Heath Friday afternoon when I still haven’t heard from her. Yes, I’ve resorted to using our friends for information.
“She hasn’t said a lot. At least not to me. Last night, they kicked Adam and me out to have girl time. Ginny is hungover as fuck today.”
I hadn’t really expected her to sit on the couch and recount the entire thing to our friends, but I wonder what she’s told them. Do they know we got married? I’m guessing not, or Heath would be giving me so much shit right now.
“Did she get the flowers? And the balloons?”
“Yeah, man, their place is one flower arrangement away from looking like someone died in there.”
“Someone did.” I’m lying on the pink couch, my new favorite spot, arm thrown over my face.
I don’t have to look at the screen of my phone to know Heath is holding back laughter. I can hear it in his voice. “Dude. No one died. You’re going to be fine. You two will work this out. She just needs—”
He stops mid-sentence, and I hear Dakota and Ginny’s voices in the background. I can’t make out their words, but I can hear her, and everything inside of me lights up and then dies all over again. Fuck, I miss her.
38
Dakota
There are three weeks before the fall semester starts. The apartment building is starting to fill up again, and most of the jocks are back for preseason training, which means there is no shortage of things to do and parties to attend. Not that I have any interest in any of it.
Ginny and Reagan have been great. I’ve never been the one that needed consoling, and they keep looking at me with big, sad eyes that I know are from a good place but make me feel worse because I know I must look as awful as I feel.
Two nights ago, we had a night in and watched sappy movies and ate ice cream and all of the queso in Valley. Not together, but it was still glorious.
But after too many days of feeling sorry for myself, it’s time to do something. I lace up my shoes and go for a long run. Running has always been an outlet for me. I was a sporty kid, but I didn’t start running competitively until after my mom died. It was one place where no one asked me if I was okay or questioned my silence. If you sit alone in the cafeteria at school, people whisper. But not when you run. I didn’t realize at the time how much those runs allowed me to escape, but as I once again find myself searching for solitude, I realize this is where it’s always been okay
for me to not be okay.
When I get back to the apartment, I feel lighter than I have since returning to Valley. Reagan is in the kitchen, standing and eating a bowl of cereal.
“Another delivery came.” She points to a box on our kitchen counter. All the lightness fades in an instant.
“Want me to open it?” Ginny asks from where she lies on the couch.
I pull my earbuds out and drop them next to the box. “No. Yes. No.”
“Come on. You don’t want to know what’s inside? I’m dying.” Ginny hops up and comes to the kitchen. She runs a finger over the packing tape and looks at Reagan. “Back me up here.”
“It has been interesting. Who could have predicted an entire box of hair ties?”
My already tight chest constricts a little more. A hundred hair ties to be exact. All red. I look down at the one I haven’t been able to remove from my ring finger.
“Or the Pop Rocks. Do I even want to know?” Ginny asks.
“Open it,” I say. As much as it hurts, I do want to know. Every single gift has been over the top in true Johnny form, but also more sentimental than I pegged him for.
Ginny tries to hide how giddy she is about it but fails spectacularly. She rips open the box and stills.
“What is it?” Reagan asks.
Instead of answering, Ginny holds out the box to me.
White Converse covered in rhinestones or crystals. Oh, god, they better not be crystals. Either way, they’re custom and expensive. So very Johnny. I pull one from the box to show them both.
“Those are cute.” Reagan smiles. “But why white?”
I shrug like I don’t understand the significance, put it back in the box, and hand it to her. “Set it with the others. I can’t deal with that right now.”
“Do you think you’ll ever forgive him?” Ginny asks.
“Of course, I’ll forgive him.” I’m mad, and I’m hurt. The second more than the first. I know he didn’t do it maliciously, but he still did it. No thought beyond the moment and no consideration for how it might impact me. I know he’s sorry and, yes, I know that I will forgive him, but right now, I can’t forgive myself. I knew it was a bad idea to get involved in a summer fling and break the rules of my internship, but I gave in and let his carefree and wild attitude overturn my better judgment.
My phone rings, and I don’t even have to look to know it’s him. He calls every day, leaves rambling voice mails telling me about his day, and then signs off by apologizing and asking me to call him back.
“He messed up.” Reagan reaches over and squeezes my hand.
“We never should have happened. We were two people in a new city clinging to each other out of loneliness and forced proximity. We’re too different. It’s better to cut things off now, and maybe someday we can be friends again.”
I can’t admit to Ginny and Reagan that I think we’re beyond ever going back to friends. I know myself well enough to know that seeing him will break my heart all over again. Maybe with enough time.
“I’m going to shower.”
Their gazes full of pity and sadness follow me into my bedroom where I shut the door and then lean against it to let out a shaky breath.
I miss him. There I’ve admitted it. Woo. Go me. What do I win? Another day filled with sad memories and heartbreak.
Because I’ve apparently turned into a masochist, I bring my phone to my ear to listen to his most recent voice mail.
“Hey, Kota. It’s me. It’s Johnny.” His deep voice drives tiny daggers into my heart. “I’m out for a walk with Charli. Went to a Twins game last night with Jack. Thought of you. Saw Quinn and some of the other interns at Wild’s. Thought of you. Oh, and get this, you know how there was a rumor that Jack hooked up with an intern who went all psycho on him and blasted it on social media? It wasn’t Jack. It was Declan. Can you believe it? He told me himself. It’s a crazy story.” He pauses. “I wish you were here so I could tell you in person. I don’t think it’d be the same over voice mail. I miss you. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Call me back.” He’s quiet, but I hear his sigh, and then the recording ends.
I head over to the Hall of Fame to talk to my boss and see if I can get on the schedule sooner rather than later. She’s ecstatic to have me back, which makes me feel a tiny bit better about everything. Maybe I blew my dream job, but this one isn’t so bad. And Blythe did say she’d write me a reference letter, so maybe the summer wasn’t a total waste.
There are only so many ways to kill the day, and I end up back at the apartment, resigning myself to another night of watching my happy roommates text or hang out with their boyfriends.
I swear I saw Adam and Heath less when they lived across the breezeway from us. Now that we’ve moved into a three-bedroom a floor up, our apartment has become the new hang spot.
And I’m happy for my friends. I really am. Even more so after the amazing summer I had. I had a little piece of that this summer. I get it now.
Heath is in our living room by himself when I walk in.
“Hey,” I say, dropping my keys on the counter. “Where is everyone?”
“Ginny is talking to her mom on the phone. Adam and Reagan are in her room.”
I nod and grab a sparkling water from the fridge. Ginny comes out of her room, falling onto the cushion next to Heath. “Hey, you’re back. Where’d you go all day?”
“I stopped by the Hall of Fame. Regina got me a few hours this week helping with events and doing office work. It’s boring, but it’s better than sitting around waiting for summer to end.”
The days are long even as I try to fill them full of activities. When Sienna and Rhett group call us later, I wander out to the living room and plaster on a happy face. It’s the first time since their engagement that they’ve come up for air, and we huddle around Ginny’s laptop in the living room so everyone can hear all the details. I was there, of course, but I stay and listen to them retell the story.
“Maverick helped arrange everything,” Rhett says. “Where is he anyway?”
“Might have been my bad,” Heath says. “I wasn’t sure if…” He glances at me, and I drop my gaze to the floor. “Let me text him to hop on.”
A minute later, Johnny’s face appears on the screen. He’s got on a Wildcats hat pulled low on his eyes, but his smile is easy and light. “Hey, guys. What’s up?”
Since the rest of us have already caught up, the questions turn to Maverick. I can tell by the background and noise that he’s at Wild’s—clinking glasses and people talking. Declan’s big shoulder is in half the frame.
“How’s Minnesota?” Adam asks him.
“Uhh, it’s okay.” Johnny briefly looks at me. “Most of the guys are still on vacation, but I’m working out hard every day, and they’ve got me doing a lot of press leading up to the season.”
“Miss you, buddy,” Heath says and makes a heart with his hands.
“Right back at ya.”
The conversation bounces back around to Rhett and Sienna. When are they getting married? Where?
My stomach twists with sadness and a little guilt that I haven’t shared with my friends the biggest thing that’s ever happened to me.
When the call is over, I ask Reagan and Ginny to come into my room. Normally, Heath and Adam would whine and complain, and the fact they don’t makes me feel like poor, pitiful Dakota. But whatever, right now, I don’t care. I need to tell someone.
We sit on top of my bed. I can’t figure out the right way to say the words. It still sounds so ridiculous in my head. I go back and forth on whether I should call Sienna. I don’t want to steal any of her thunder from the engagement, but I don’t want her to feel excluded either.
Screw it.
“I’m calling Sienna.” I hold out the phone as Ginny and Reagan share a worried look.
“Are you okay?” Reagan asks. “Was that hard seeing Maverick?”
“Brutal,” I say honestly. Sienna answers, and I angle the phone so that she can see everyone.
“What’s going on?” she asks.
I swallow and look around at my best friends in the whole world.
“Johnny and I got married in Vegas.”
It’s so quiet I can hear the guys in the living room and the TV. They’re watching the NBA playoffs, and something big must have happened because they are excited about it. I’m finding a million things to focus on, anything but the silence and disbelieving jaw-dropped faces of my favorite girls.
Sienna is the first to recover. “When you say married, you mean…”
I hold up my left hand. “Married.”
Ginny starts giggling. She slaps a hand over her mouth and waves a hand. “I’m sorry,” she gets out before erupting into laughter again. Soon Reagan joins her, and then Sienna and I do too.
“I know,” I say, tears that are some weird mixture of happy and sad stream down my face. “It’s absolutely ridiculous. I wanted to tell you guys but… I don’t know. I was afraid that you’d tell me how wild it was. I mean, I know. I knew then, but some small part of me wanted to be happy about it too. And then this one went and got engaged.” I motion to the phone. “I’m so happy for you, and I’m sorry that I’m dimming your excitement with my marriage disaster. You’re getting married, and I’m getting an annulment.”
“Wait.” All the laughter dies as Reagan rests a hand on my leg. “You’re going to get it annulled?”
“Well, yeah. It was a summer fling and an impulsive, drunken decision.” I share a picture with Sienna and then show Ginny and Reagan. It’s the only picture I took the night we got married. We didn’t want to risk the chapel releasing photos and outing us, so we only took them with our phones. We were coherent enough not to make headlines with a Vegas wedding, but not for much else.
“You look beautiful and really happy.” Ginny tilts her head and lays it on my shoulder. “Are you sure you two can’t work it out?”
“And then what? He’s there. I’m here.”
“But you’re married,” Reagan whines.
“Oooooh. The white blinged-out Chucks make sense now!”
Wild Love (Campus Nights Book 4) Page 24
