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“We will, thanks!”
The couple moved on as Tabitha, who had just moved to town and was a new agent at Whisper Lake Realty, relieved Kennedy from her post. Kennedy considered going down to the pier where Laura, Knox, the twins, and her family were. Her sisters and their husbands and kids had all come to Whisper Lake for the festival.
But she decided against it. If Seb was in town, chances were that’s where he’d be. And as much as she wanted to see him, she was equally terrified of the encounter. She’d covered two shifts at the booth, and had spent the entire day stressing about the possible sighting, which never happened. She was exhausted and sick to her stomach, so she decided that she would text Laura and tell her that she was heading home to bed.
She pulled her phone out of her pocket and was looking down texting when she turned to walk toward the parking area and ran smack dab into someone. Her eyes shut on impact, but before she opened them, she knew exactly who she’d bumped into. The familiar scent that she knew intimately wafted through the air as large hands wrapped around her upper arms, steadying her.
When her lids opened, she tilted her head up and looked into the deep, dreamy brown eyes that had haunted her for the past two months. He looked even sexier than she’d remembered. His strong jaw was peppered with scruff, his hair was a little longer and messy like he’d just rolled out of bed. He was wearing a black shirt that was snug in all the right places to showcase his muscular upper body.
Her head spun with dizziness as she tried to catch her breath. Her heart was racing like it was on a high-speed chase and her entire body was covered in goosebumps.
Just like it had always been when she saw Seb, everything around them disappeared. Time stood still. A bubble formed around them that only they inhabited. She wasn’t sure what the phenomenon was, but if she could bottle it up and sell it, she’d be a billionaire because it was the best feeling in the world.
“Hi,” she managed to croak out over the lump that had formed in her throat.
“Hi,” he replied.
Her eyes closed again as the sound of his deep voice rolled over her. When their eyes broke contact, she realized that she was being dragged right back under his spell. Impersonal. That was what she’d promised herself she’d be.
With her eyes still shut, she took a step back from him and cleared her throat. His arms fell to his side as she opened her eyes.
The corner of his mouth tilted up in the lopsided grin that made her heart go pitter-patter. “How have you been?”
“Good!” she enthused, hoping to mask that she’d been miserable. “How about you?”
He looked down at the ground and then back up at her. The intensity in his gaze stole the little bit of breath she’d managed to grasp. “I’ve missed you.”
All of the conflicting emotions she’d been feeling melded into one super emotion, Care-Bear-Stare-style and it was anger. “You can’t say that.”
“I can’t?” he asked.
“No. You can’t. You can’t just leave, not say goodbye, not call, not text, and then show up and…” With every word she said, her voice got louder. She didn’t want to cause a scene and give the gossip train fuel for what they could be arguing about. She’d managed to hide the affair they’d had and not had to deal with any questions about it and she wanted to keep it that way. “You know what, it doesn’t matter.”
“I’m sorry,” he apologized with a sincerity that threatened to bulldoze the tiny wall she’d been able to construct around her heart.
She shook her head and took another step back from him. “You don’t have to apologize.”
“Yes, I do. I should have told you I was leaving. I should have called. I should have texted. I just thought…” Seb looked down at the ground as he put his hands in his front pockets.
Kennedy knew that she shouldn’t care what he thought, it didn’t matter what he said now, his actions had spoken louder than his words. She knew that, in her head, unfortunately her heart and hormones were currently in charge of her feet and they were cemented in place.
* * *
Seb had hoped that being away from Kennedy would have helped him to stop obsessing over her. He thought with distance and the distraction of filming, his feelings would have lessened or, even better, gone away completely.
If anything, the opposite had happened. Absence hadn’t just made the heart grow fonder; it had made the heart fall even more madly in love with her.
He’d tried to convince himself during his time in New York that he’d built up whatever was between them into something bigger than what it was. Now that he was back, and looking into her eyes, he knew that what he felt was real. More real than anything else he’d ever felt. He also knew that if he didn’t say something, if he didn’t tell her how he felt, he’d regret it for the rest of his life.
After taking a deep breath, he lifted his head. When he did, he noticed that Kennedy wasn’t looking at him, she was looking past him and her face was pale. All of the color had drained out of it. It looked like she’d seen a ghost.
Seb lifted his hand and touched her arm. “Kennedy.”
She tensed up at his touch and he saw the alarm register on her face.
Fuck.He hadn’t even told her how he felt yet, and she looked like she was panicking. Maybe the damage he’d done by leaving was irreparable. Maybe, like Keaton had said, it was too little too late.
If that was the case, Seb knew that he’d made the biggest mistake of his life.
