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“The game ended five minutes ago. Asher scored the winning touchdown on a quarterback sneak up the middle.”
“I…” I don’t know what to say.
“Do you know why I said her name that night at poker when everyone was teasing about setting you up?”
I don’t answer.
“You never came to town when she did. You’d always grimace or look away whenever her name was mentioned, but I’d see the ancient hurt in your eyes. Asher wonders why I’m so good at poker. It’s because I can read people. And I can read you. You love her.”
I startle back a step, relieved the door is closed and the water is running in the bathroom. Hopefully, Georgia didn’t hear that.
“You love her,” she repeats, and I grab her arm and walk us out of the suite and into the empty hallway, all the while she keeps talking. “But your guilt over the past and your love for your friends isn’t something you know how to overcome.”
I stop us a few doors down from our suite. “How do you know about my past with her?”
“Zax mentioned it without going into full details, but like I said, I can read you and I can put pieces together easily enough.”
I look down at the carpet between us, not willing to speak.
“When I first met you, I was terrified you’d hate me,” she says, and my head slingshots up until our eyes lock. “I was the woman doing stuff with Zax, falling in love with him as he fell for me, and I was worried you’d hate me for it because of Suzie.”
I shake my head, losing my words, but still managing, “I didn’t.”
She smiles softly at me, her blue eyes sparkling. “I know.”
I shake my head again. “She would have hated what he turned into and loved you for everything you’ve given him. I loved you for what you were doing for him.”
Her hand reaches my shoulder. “I know. Because you have a big, beautiful heart, Lenox. You don’t see it. I know you don’t. But only someone with a heart capable of that sort of love and understanding would want it for others. Suzie may have been like that, but you are too.”
“I hurt Georgia. Terribly. Unforgivably. I hurt my best friends too and did not deserve their mercy. Not after what I did. Georgia hates me, and with good reason.”
“If she were indifferent to you, then I’d believe she hates you. Her sort of hate is self-preservation and protection. Sometimes the right person comes along at the wrong time. That doesn’t make them wrong for us, it makes us wrong for them. Maybe you didn’t do things the right way back then, but you walked away and changed your life. You didn’t blame anyone else for your mistakes. You owned them, faced them, and came out stronger because of them. You do so much for others, but what do you do for yourself?”
It's as if she’s ripping out my insides and feeding them through a meat grinder. Helping Georgia is supposed to be a salvation. A way out of this omnipresent guilt, at least where she, Zax, and Grey are concerned. But this… I don’t know how to breathe through this.
Her warm hand finds my face, and though she doesn’t look like Suzie, their features are somewhat similar. Blonde hair and blue eyes and such fire and strength, you can’t help but love them.
“You are deserving, Lenox Moore. Every bit as much as Zax was, if not more. If you love Georgia, which I suspect you do since you look at her like she’s your universe, then don’t let that go simply because you didn’t do right by her once. Don’t stand in your own way when you can have everything.”
Aurelia turns and walks away, leaving me here for a moment, feeling like I just had the wind punched out of me. She called me deserving. And being deserving of Georgia is all I’ve ever wanted to be.
Georgia is singing at the top of her lungs, as she has been for the last two hours since we left my house. She woke up like a chirpy bird, twirling around my house this morning in what she mockingly referred to as pajamas—a thin tank top and tiny boy shorts—drinking coffee and asking me about the most painful places on the body to get tattoos. It’s a total one-eighty from how we left things last night, and when I raised a questioning brow at her, she simply shrugged and said, “What else can I do?”
I left it at that with no desire to argue with her further, and now she’s commandeered my car’s sound system, her phone connected to it, playing all kinds of music from Taylor Swift to eighties pop to fucking Central Square to Cian O’Connor and even Dex Chapman.
But it’s a fucking Central Square song she has on now that has her leaning over the console of my car, using her fist as a microphone, and serenading me in a virtual duet with Grey all the while I grumble and pretend to be annoyed just so she’ll keep singing to me. Georgia’s voice gives me chills, it’s so good.
The song comes to an end, and she turns it down now that I’ve taken an exit off the highway for Lavender Lake.
“What? No Whitney Houston?” I quip.
She sighs dramatically. “Oh, if only I could belt it like Whitney.”
I won’t tell her she sings better.
“So, does this mean we’re here?”
I thump my thumb on the top of the steering wheel. “There are some things you need to know.”
