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“To eat. I’m going to have Pierre cook something up.”
Mm-hm. “You’re going to sit there and watch his muscles, aren’t you?”
She smirks. “What can I say? I’m a horny girl.”
“You mean you’re ahungrygirl.”
“I said what I said.”
Jesus Chris. Nolan’s crush on the French chef her father let her hire is the worst kept secret in history. I mean, the girl practically drools every time she looks at him. She’s anything but discreet, and while usually I’d find it comical, I’m just not in the mood today.
I fake a yawn and stretch my arms over my head. “I’m actually pretty beat. I’m going to get some sleep.”
She tsks at me. “See? Work is sucking the life out of you. You should quit.”
“Goodnight, Nolan,” I say warningly.
“Night,” she singsongs, skipping down the hallway to the kitchen.
It’s not like I lied. Not really, anyway. Iamexhausted. We were in the studio for twelve hours, listening to the same song over and over until we felt it was right. That gets tiring faster than you think. It’s not an easy job, but hearing my words come to life makes it worth it.
I retreat to my room and climb into the bed that is entirely too big for one person. No matter how comfortable the mattress is, or the way the fluffy comforter basically swallows me whole, it’s never enough. I crave the feeling of Hayes’s bed.Ourbed. I want to lie beside him as he wraps his arms around me and mumbles nonsense in his sleep.
Taking out my phone, I go for the self-destructive route and open Instagram. The date on the calendar stared back at me all damn day, reminding me of what today is. I used to get just as excited as Cam would for this. Bonfire season was everything to us—the start of summer, the end of isolation, and the best Friday night of the year.
Owen is the only one to not suspect anything when I followed him from my pseudo-account. One that has barely any pictures other than a few of Nolan’s cats and one of the pool. He probably didn’t even notice, and if he did, just assumed it was a girl who thinks he’s hot or something.
Gag me.
The most recent post is from an hour ago, with the captionKICKING OFF BONFIRE SEASON RIGHT!It’s four pictures within a slideshow. The first one is him and a beer—his one true love. The second is of the fire in front of him, but my stomach hurts when I see Cam in the background.
Hayes wasn’t the only person I left that night, and I miss my brother more than most would in my situation. He was always my rock growing up, and I really could have used that support when I left, but I knew that if I reached out, he would tell Hayes where I am. I just couldn’t risk it. So, I lost him, too.
I swipe to the next picture and chuckle as I see Owen and Lucas looking like drunken idiots, with Owen smiling at the camera and Lucas smiling somewhere else. There’s never really been a good picture of the two of them. One is always managing to screw it up.
It’s the last picture that does me in. It’s just of Hayes, flipping off the camera with one hand and a beer in his other. He looks so damn good, the same way he always has, just a little older. I’ve tried to avoid seeing pictures of him as much as I can. It’s tempting enough to go back even without being reminded of what I lost. But there’s something about the sadness in his eyes that no one else seems to notice. Like he’s desperate to escape his own life, even if only for a moment.
And I get it because I feel it, too.
Tears fill my eyes as the pain in my chest intensifies with each second. There aren’t enough words for how much I miss him. How badly I wish that I could go back to that horrific night and do things differently. But there’s also the part of me that’s relieved to see he’s still free. He’s not rotting away in a prison somewhere.
He's got his bar and his friends, and he’s sitting by a fire and drinking a beer—his favorite way to spend a night. I just wish I could be there, sitting on his lap and making Cam and Mali complain about how disgustingly in love we are. Because we were. We weresoinsanely in love. I still am. That feeling is never going to go away for me.
And as I cry myself to sleep like I’ve done so many nights over the last nineteen heartbreaking months, I let the pain of missing him eat me alive.
If only it would consume me.
The feelingof being hungover has become far too familiar. There’s a lingering taste of alcohol on my tongue that makes me feel nauseous, but the headache keeps me from getting up to do anything about it. I blindly reach over to grab my phone and see I’m an hour late for opening the bar. I’d say Cam is going to kill me, but he’s probably just as fucked as I am.
Swiping my phone open, my eyes go wide as I see Laiken’s name. But the hope that she tried calling me dies a painful death as I realize it wasmewho tried callingher.
Twenty-seven times.
Thankfully, it doesn’t belong to anyone else. But technically, it doesn’t belong to her either. Her parents transferred the number to my account when we got married, and I would rather pay for it than cancel it. At least that way I can still hear her voice when she doesn’t answer.
I know, it’s pathetic. Most of the time, my anger overpowers any feelings of missing her and being upset she’s gone. But when I’m drunk, all bets are off. Either I don’t care at all, or I call her—twenty-seven times, apparently.
“You alive up here?” a familiar voice asks.
