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“I want to go back,” I announce, hoping she’ll turn around. “I want to wait for Dad.”
She glares at me in the mirror, and I frown as deep as I can.
“Well, we’re not going back,” she says.
“I don’t want to leave. If you’re getting a divorce, I want to stay with Dad in the hotel.”
“I want daddy,” Aidan cries.
Mom starts to cry. I can see the tears running down her face in the mirror. I know she really doesn’t want to leave. If we go back and wait for my dad, everything will be okay.
But she keeps on driving, and I start to wish that anything would happen, anything at all, to make us turn back.
GOODBYE Rachel.
Landon’s last words to me before he drove away. They keep playing over and over in my head, and with every second that passes, I can feel the distance between us stretching, growing wider, triggering a frantic desire to run after him, to tell him I was wrong, that he’s everything I want, everything I need.
You can’t give me what I want.
Regret floods me, deep and painful, at the thought that I said those words to him.
I could have told him what I really wanted. I could have told him that I was in love with him, and I would have. But I knew what his reaction would be. He’d told me himself.
As soon as a woman starts to demand more than I can give, I walk away.
He would have walked away from me too.
And I wouldn’t have been able to bear it.
I did the right thing, I tell myself desperately. Being without Landon is a better option than being in love with a man who would never love me. Being without him is a better option than having to pretend that I don’t want more than he does, that I’m not aching for something deeper.
Being without him is a better option than waiting helplessly for the day he’ll tell me that he’s done with me.
Only right now, it doesn’t feel like a better option. It feels like torture. It is agony, squeezing at my insides, tearing at my heart, and leaving scars that I’m certain will never go away.
My memories don’t help. Landon is everywhere in my head. The first time I saw him at the Swanson Court hotel, when the elevator doors slid open to reveal the last thing I’d expected to see on the other side. A man with the physical perfection of a Greek god, and such undeniable sexual magnetism. Without even touching me, he’d made me forget everything but how attracted to him I was. He’d thought I was a hooker, and I’d played along. The result had been the most intense sexual experience of my life up to that point.
I remember Landon at his club, letting me think that he still believed I was a hooker, then the next day in my boss’s office… I almost smile at the memory. “I want to fuck you again,” he’d said. I’d been so angry, and yet, despite all my best intentions, I’d ended up in his office, half-naked on his desk, surrendering my body to his expert touch, letting him have his pleasure, and taking mine, because when I was with him, it was impossible to deny that my body was totally his.
So many memories. All of them painful now. How long will it be before I stop thinking about him?
Staring unseeing at the door to my apartment, I wipe my eyes with the back of my hands. I have no idea how long I’ve been standing here, but I can’t seem to bring myself to unlock the door, to step over the threshold and go on with life. Life without Landon Court.
I want to find a way to erase the last thirty minutes. I want to avoid the aching emptiness growing inside me. I want, more than anything, to regain the physical connection and the pleasure of being with Landon. Not the man everybody saw, the billionaire hotelier and ruthless businessman the press made him out to be, but the man I’d glimpsed inside, the man Landon Court really was, the caring, sensual, and incredibly gorgeous man who, from the very first, made me feel things, both physical and emotional, that I’d never known I was capable of.
The man I now had to live without.
Isn’t this what you wanted? The voice in my head is harsh and taunting. Why else would you tell him that you want more than he can give? Why else would you agree to meet with your ex? You wanted to show Landon that you didn’t care. You wanted to leave on your own terms, not as one of the women he had to walk away from because they wanted ‘more than he could give.’
If it’s what I want, then why is it tearing me to pieces?
Goodbye, Rachel.
“He can’t give you what you want,” I whisper to myself, trying to find even the slightest sliver of strength inside. “You’re in love with him. He walks away from women who want commitment. You’re doing the right thing ending it now.”
The pep talk works somewhat. I take a deep breath and unlock the door to the apartment I share with my cousin Laurie. It’s a small place, comfortably furnished. My home and sanctuary, and yet, right now, all it does is remind me of Landon. He was only here a few times, to pick me up for a night at the theater, to spend the night with me, in my bed, drugging me with his touch, making me lose myself in the kind of pleasure only he could give… but he has left his mark somehow, the same way he’s left a mark on my heart.
Closing the door behind me, I lean back on it, and will my thoughts to find another direction, something else to focus on instead of Landon Court. At that moment, Laurie emerges from her room. She’s already dressed for bed in a thigh length t-shirt. The name of her boyfriend, Brett’s gym is written on the front in big, bright lettering. Her curly hair is in a long braid, and as always, it’s difficult to look at her without being reminded of how physically striking she is.
