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Tomorrow I’d wake up… and my life would go back… to the way it was.
I’d find another bullshit job, and I’d go back to…
Alba. Olive. Jamie. And… what else?
I frowned down at the teapot. Why couldn’t I think of anything I looked forward to doing when I got home? Why couldn’t I remember a single memorable experience I’d had in the last year that was just my own? SomethingI’ddone, an accomplishmentI’dmade, a milestoneI’dpassed—not Jamie, not Alba, not Olive.
I came up wholly, entirely blank.
So, then I tried extending the perimeters of my internal search to two years, then to three… four. Nothing.
Not one thing.
I hadn’t traveled; I hadn’t expanded my minuscule social circle; I hadn’t really dated or taken up any hobbies or learned anything new. I’d just…
“… I don’t recognize you anymore, Ree…You’ve let him win. You keep letting him win. You don’t care about work, you don’t care about meeting new people or making new friends, you don’t date. You don’t have any goals or ambitions anymore. You laugh and make jokes and pretend like nothing ever bothers you, but you’ve given up. You’ve numbed yourself to the point where you just… you don’t live. You exist and that’s all.”
There was a soft ringing in my ear as I stared blankly out the window, watching the sky slowly turn a darker, angrier shade of gray. The glass eventually fogged in the corners, and little droplets of rain splattered against my view.
My tea had gone cold, but I couldn’t bring myself to drink any of it. I couldn’t bring myself to do anything other than sit there, stare, and feel… nothing.
No. Not nothing. It was more of… an emptiness. Like something fundamental was missing. Except it wasn’t scary or alarming. It wasn’t like The Fundamental Thing was gone forever. More like I’d maybe just misplaced it. Or hidden it away a long time ago for safekeeping and couldn’t quite remember how to get it back. It was in there somewhere, I just needed to look for it now that I knew it was gone.
And I could do that at home, during my seven hundredth rewatch of Bridget Jones. Or sitting at my new desk, dying a slow death at my new bullshit job.
It was going to be fine. All I had to do was get in the car, get on the plane, and never allow myself to think about Adrien Cloutier ever again.
All I had to do was go back.
You exist and that’s all.
You don’t live.
* * *
I accidentally missed my flight.
And by accidentally, I meant I shoved my suitcase behind my chair and pretended like I’d never heard the name Ria Sanchez in my life when the suited driver came into the teashop asking for me.
Did I then haul my suitcase back to the house and sneak up to the cursed bedroom I’d been sharing with Adrien? Yes.
Did I spend the majority of the day playing backgammon with Gampy and baking with Alice while Maxwell sang a whole bunch of D12? Yes.
Did I enjoy myself? Immensely.
But none of that mattered. Because I’d come back to do one thing, and one thing only: prove to myself that what I’d felt when Adrien kissed me had been a total and utter fluke.
Emotions had been running high, and all that murderous rage had blasted straight to my head and messed with my hormonal wiring. The increased heart rate, the trembling, the inability to breathe properly had all been part of a fight-or-flight response thing—an adrenaline kick, if you will. I was ninety-nine-point-nine-nine-nine-nine percent sure of it. I just needed to be one hundred percent sure of it so I could go back and move on with my life without that pesky little question mark poking into the back of my brain.
Which was why I was restlessly pacing the room when Adrien came back from his meeting. I halted midstep when the door handle finally twisted (seven minutes and thirty-eight seconds later than when he’d said he’d be back) … (not that I was counting).
“It’s not what it looks like,” I blurted before he’d even had a chance to enter the room. “I’m obviously not staying.”
Adrien’s eyebrows climbed when he saw me, a cocky smirk toying at his mouth. He shut the door and leaned against it, arms crossed. The man was arrogance personified. “It’s nice to see you, too, Sanchez. How wasyourday?”
“I’m not staying,” I said again, just in case he hadn’t heard me the first time. Then I wiggled the diamond ring off my finger and held it out to him. “Also, this is yours.”
He stalked to where I stood in the middle of the room, his midnight-green gaze bolted to mine. I had to tilt my chin up to maintain eye contact, the man was so irritably tall.
