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6
Ten years.
That’s how long it had been since I’d seen those eyes, that tiny freckle on the tip of her nose, that shade of hair that looked like sunshine and sugar. Ten long years. Enough time had passed; seeing her in person again should have been meaningless, like feeling absolutely nothing…seeing her should have lessened the pain and eased any tension that might have lingered in the fissures of our relationship.
But it hadn’t.
It was like being hit in the chest with a two-by-four. I would know; I’d actually taken a plank to the torso for a role once. Why was she here? Last I’d heard, Bexley Black had moved away from Seattle and headed back home to Texas, where her parents lived. I’d heard that about six months after getting her voicemail.
I itched to grab my keys and head home so I could dig through my Bexley box. Yeah, I had a box of her stuff that I’d never gotten rid of. The voicemail recording was one of the items in the box, along with photos, her drawings, and that fucking little piece of plastic that had ruined our relationship.
“You seemed off tonight,” Henna mused, looking at me over the rim of her wine glass. She’d already taken a few of the pills I’d never asked her about; I assumed what they were, but I didn’t care enough to ask. She usually took them, guzzled half a bottle of whatever she could find, then passed out till morning. I didn’t judge her; this life we led was a shit show. No one understood us, yet everyone felt the freedom to criticize us.
Honestly, if Bexley hadn’t been at that center tonight and I hadn’t been reunited with the only girl to ever break my heart, I probably would have given Henna shit about the stunt she’d pulled by telling the local news outlets and bloggers we’d be arriving today. She’d have laughed and said a little press wasn’t going to hurt us.
She had no idea how protective I was of this place. Oregon was where I’d grown up, these lakes and trails were where I’d spent my youth, and my parents lived here. So, when I did visit, it always felt a little safer, a little more intimate and private because this was a smaller, more rural area. So, alerting the “press,” whether a group of online bloggers or whatever the hell it was that’d hounded us tonight, was not okay; I wanted my privacy, and if Henna had given two shits about this arrangement, she’d have respected that.
“I was off because of the paps.” I suppressed my other issues, clearing my throat. I needed to move, get out of the villa…get away from Henna. What I wanted was to see Bexley and talk to her, ask her about that phone conversation I’d overheard, about why she had someone named Cole calling her Mommy and why it sounded like she was fighting over a custody arrangement. Whatever was going on wasn’t any of my business, but still, when I’d run up those steps to check out the gym and heard her talking, I hadn’t been able to help myself.
Bexley was a mom.
Go fucking figure.
At least I assumed she was one. Fuck, that was the entire issue here—I didn’t actually know, and what I didn’t know was driving me crazy.
Henna sipped her wine while scrolling through her phone, unaware that I was struggling to wrap my brain around the person who’d acknowledged knowing me. Maybe Henna didn’t care; it wasn’t like we were exclusive. She was used to seeing images and photos of me with other women. It wouldn’t have surprised me if she just assumed Bex was some chick I’d known while growing up here. Ironically enough, for all her faults, Henna wasn’t into that sort of drama and didn’t care to comment on any of my trysts. I extended her the same courtesy.
“I’m headed to my parents’ house for a bit,” I said over my shoulder before walking to the door. I didn’t wait for her to respond.
* * *
The dark nightwrapped around my shoulders, like a familiar hug. White, sparkling stars dotted the velvet sky, the juniper trees lining the winding road as I traveled up toward my parents’ house. The middlemost part of Oregon was full of little towns, forming tiny pockets of civilization. The resort was nearly forty minutes north of where my parents lived.
My parents owned five acres of irrigated farmland, just three miles outside the city. It was beautiful, but it wasn’t what I’d grown up with. No, after I started making decent money with the HitFlix series, I sent a chunk to them and then kept sending it.
I owed them everything, so of course I wanted them to be comfortable and spoiled.
Pulling up to the closed wrought iron gate, I punched in the code I’d had set up for them and drove in. Their three-story country home shone bright, the large floor-to-ceiling windows illuminated by lights that were on throughout the house.
My heart kicked in my chest with apprehension as I pulled closer and put my car into park. It was due to excitement about seeing them, and also hearing what they might know about Bexley.
“Ryan!” my mom exclaimed from the stoop of her well-lit front door. She wore a flowy sweater and had her hair back in a loose braid, the graying strands almost silver under the lights.
“Hey Mom,” I replied, scooping her into a tight hug. My father came out after her, wearing his pajama bottoms and a white t-shirt under a blue robe, a pair of thin glasses perched on his nose.
“We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow, son,” he said into my shoulder as he pulled me into a hug.
“Yeah, well, I needed to come out and see you guys.” I smiled, following them into the house.
Percy and Penelope, my parents’ Corgis, ran around my ankles, barking at my intrusion.
“Come in, sit. Want some pie?” my mother asked, moving around the kitchen toward the fridge. Gloria Prince was the best hostess I’d ever known. She always had pie on hand. Always.
“No, Mom, that’s okay. I won’t be here for long tonight, I just wanted to talk a bit.”
My mother’s indigo eyes slid toward mine in a knowing way. “This talk wouldn’t have something to do with you getting engaged, would it?” she carefully asked, while my father tapped away on the tablet in front of him.
What the actual…
