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Then again, isn’t having my guard up—closing myself off—letting Patrick win?
Isn’t believing the worst about people letting fear win?
And the more I think about it, the more I realize I wasn’t able to be myself around my ex. I can’t remember the last time he asked about how I was feeling, or what I was thinking. He was always so busy. Distracted.
It’s really, really nice that Riley is asking about my interior world. I’m shocked—and not shocked at all—to find I’m bursting with things I want to say.
Or maybe I just want to be seen after not having been seen at all for what feels like forever.
“You were right. Patrick—my ex—he liked me better blonde. So I’ve been blonde for, gosh, six years now?”
“Y’all dated for that long?”
“Pa introduced us right after—gah, that feels good.”
Riley presses a kiss to the nape of my neck. “That’s the point. Relax, honey.”
I scoff. “Trust me, this is the most relaxed I’ve been in years.”
“I can tell.”
“Patrick and I—we were introduced to each other after I graduated and started working at The Gibbes Group. I’m an event planner there.”
“You like it?” His thumbs move up the furrow of my spine.
I hold onto the back of the sofa. “It’s fine. I’m good at it. I keep getting promoted, which is nice. I feel like I’m a really good employee. A really good girlfriend too. Was a really good girlfriend.”
“Sounds like you’ve worked your ass off to make everyone else happy.”
My heart skips a beat. I turn my head to look at him over my shoulder. “I have, yeah. And it hurts, you know? Because when I think about it, I’m not sure I’ve been very happy trying to be this perfect, shiny person.”
His eyes bore into mine. “Maybe because that’s not who you are.”
Lord, give me the strength not to climb this man like a tree.
“Shiny isn’t real, Lu,” he continues. “It ain’t very interesting either.”
“But everybody likes shiny me. My parents, my boss. My ex. Or so I thought.”
“What do you think about that person? The shiny one?”
I search his eyes. There is truly nothing sexier than a man who gets it.
Gets you.
“She’s tired. And hungry, despite being full of shit.”
One side of his handsome mouth curls into a smirk. “There’s the Lu I know and miss.”
He pauses. I know he’s waiting for me to correct him. Call him out.
I don’t.
His hands shape my waist, fingers flexing as he gently guides me to face him. His gaze darts to my breasts, and a muscle in his jaw ticks. “You’re beautiful, you know that?”
I thumb his chin so his eyes meet mine again. “Thank you.”
“Still hate me?”
“Ha.” I bite my lip. “You know what’s crazy?”
“Everything? All of this? The fact that I thought you were about to slap me upstairs on the deck, but instead you put your hand down my pants?”
I laugh. “I put my hand on your pants.”
“Tell me what’s even crazier, then.”
“When you came to Charlotte three years ago, you saw me with Patrick and thought we looked so happy. I may have looked happy in the moment, but I’m starting to realize the ‘good thing’ you’re talking about wasn’t all that good. At that point, Patrick and I were all smiles on the outside, but we were barely having sex, and we never talked about anything real.”
Riley frowns. “Wow. I’m really sorry, Lu.”
“You weren’t wrong to say the world’s been chipping away at who I really am. Patrick was part of that, I think. If I had known you were there—I mean, to be fair, I hated you, so there’s no telling if I would’ve actually heard you out. But if I had—”
The unspoken words hang between us.
How terrifying to think we would’ve never had this conversation if I hadn’t come back to Bald Head, purely by chance, for Goldie and Coop’s shotgun wedding.
I’m a big fan of the idea that timing is everything. Relationships. Jobs. Family. Those things work out, or don’t work out, according to where you’re at in life and what you’re looking for. It’s nice to think the universe has our back that way.
Scary too, knowing we have so little control.
“We’re here now,” Riley says quietly. “What happens next—that’s up to us. You, really. It’s up to you.”
“Ha. I was just thinking about how little control we have over everything.”
He grins. “You and me bein’ thrown together like this? Totally out of our control, yeah. But once we’re in it, in this little situation the universe has cooked up for us, I believe it’s up to us to finish the story. She begins it. Gives us the prompt. But we’re the ones who actually write the words.”
I tackle him.
Literally throw myself at him like a lunatic fangirl. Wrapping my arms around his neck, I tip my head and plant a hard kiss on his mouth. I climb into his lap and melt my center onto his. My nipples meet with the hard wall of his chest. His skin is warm. The whorls of hair there tickle my breasts and make me hungry for more friction.
