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I startle. “Uh…?”
“I haven’t known Eden all that long, but I probably know her better than half the guys I went to school with,” Sage goes on. “She’s one of the best people I’ve ever met.”
I bow my head and let out a quiet sigh. “I know that. Letting her go damn near killed me.”
Sage reaches out and clasps my shoulder. The gesture startles me, but it’s odd because it feels like one of those brotherly gestures that remind me of what it was like when I was in the army. “Look, I don’t know what your situation is all about or why the two of you thought it was a better idea to just go your separate ways—”
“Isn’t it obvious?” I say. There’s a bite to my tone, but I can’t help it. It’s still so goddamn fresh, and every night, I go to bed thinking of her, waking up and hoping for some miracle that I’ll roll over and she’ll be there. “I can’t just leave this place, and her job—”
“She quit her job,” he says.
My jaw snaps shut so hard it makes my temples ache. She what? She did what? “When?”
“Right after she got back,” Sage tells me. He takes a step back like he can sense I need space, and I appreciate him for it.
I have no idea what to say. So she quit her job. That doesn’t mean anything. Not when I still haven’t heard from her. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that information.”
Sage nods, then folds his arms over his chest. “You could do nothing with it. Or, you could take a risk. Eden’s been hurt a lot in the time I’ve known her, and from everything Flor has told me, I know there’s been a long history of people who let her down. I also know that I’ve never seen her look the way she does when she talks about you.”
I feel like someone’s repeatedly punching me in the damn heart. I want to hop in my truck and race into the city and go after her. I want to find her and fall to my knees and beg her to help me find a way to make this work because I have never felt this way about anyone.
“When I met Flor, it was a lot like this,” Sage tells me. “We were both in the same place at the same time, and in all reality, we had no business having more than some weekend fling.”
“And then you got married,” I point out.
He laughs. “And then I realized I couldn’t live without her and showed up at her door to tell her I love her and ask her to marry me.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I wasn’t that kind of guy. I’d never been good at the grand romantic gestures.
“I’m not saying my tactic will work for you,” Sage goes on, then digs into his pocket again, “but Iamsaying that maybe you know her a little better than you think you do. Maybe you already have an idea in your head.” He reaches for me, pressing a folded piece of paper into my hand. “She’ll be at my place tomorrow at three. We won’t be back ’til five.”
I carefully unfold the paper and stare at the address. “What am I supposed to do with this?” I ask him.
He laughs and claps me on the shoulder one more time before backing away. “That’s something you gotta figure out, man, but I’ll tell you right now, I have faith.”
I don’t know what else to say, so I stand there like an asshole watching him get into his car, start the engine, and pull away like he hasn’t just tipped my life upside down and twisted it inside out. As I watch his taillights disappear around the corner, I feel the folded paper in my palm, the corners digging into my skin.
Looking back over my shoulder at the lodge, I realize that it will always feel empty until I find the courage to shoot my shot. The worst she can do is tell me no—and while yeah, that would rip my heart out and shatter it into a million pieces, at least I’ll know.
Without her…
With her…
I know I can’t go forward without taking a chance.
* * *
It’s ridiculous how terrified I feel. I’ve been in literal combat. I had my brains scrambled in my head, and I had to relearn how to live. I had to face down elite society, barely able to string four words together to make a sentence, and yet, I’ve never been so nervous in my life.
The drive down to Sage and Flor’s condo takes me just over two hours, and by the time I’m on their street, my palms are so sweaty I can barely keep a grip on the wheel. I park in the visitors’ spot, which is a good way away from the building entrance, and I force myself to sit there until I can breathe properly.
It’s just past three now, which means I have two hours and some change before Sage and Flor come back. I’m hoping they decide to take longer too, just to give me that extra time to extract my balls from where they’ve crawled up inside my body. Metaphorically speaking, though I wouldn’t be surprised if that had literally happened with the way I feel.
I flip down the visor and check myself in the mirror for the hundredth time. I took my time in the shower, trimmed my beard, even combed my eyebrows like some kind of male-model asshole. I let Miguel choose my shirt, which I have to admit is both comfortable and shows off my biceps.
But Eden has also seen me at my messiest. Soaked from the rain, covered in mud, sweating, well fucked, and first thing in the morning with wild hair and sour breath.
Closing my eyes, I take a breath and wish desperately I could call her. I wish I had bribed or begged her number out of Sage so I could have given her a heads-up. And at least then I could have put the will-she won’t-she to bed.
