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I push back from the table and stand as my heart sinks into my stomach.
“Ava, wait.” Callen comes around the table, wrapping me in his arms. “You don’t have to choose. I meant every word I said last night.”
He brushes his lips against mine as a sob bubbles from my lips, and I bury my face into his chest. My entire body trembles as I clench my eyes shut, trying to focus on anything but the pain radiating through my body.
No words can describe the magic that happened between us last night. I never could’ve imagined I’d travel around the world and find the one person who completes me. I want to shout my happiness from the rooftops, but I’m searching for a way to piece my broken heart back together before I have to tell him goodbye.
“Please understand,” I beg as tears stream down my face.
His eyes scan my face, searching for something before he takes a step back. A bone-chilling cold envelops my body as his warmth leaves me.
“I folded your clothes on the sofa in the sitting room. I’ll call you a ride before I get in the shower.”
I spin around, focusing my attention out the window, not wanting to see the look in his eyes. My shoulders shake as fresh tears stream down my cheeks.
“Thank you,” I croak, wrapping my arms tightly around my waist as if trying to hold myself together.
I don’t know how this happened. How a chance meeting with a charming stranger could derail my plans so drastically, leaving a gaping wound in my chest where my heart should be. Every moment I’ve shared with Callen over the past twenty-four hours plays on repeat in my mind, searching for where things went wrong. Where the walls around my heart crumbled to the ground. An insurmountable pain fills my chest as I hear his footsteps leading him farther away from me.
“I love—” he chokes out, but stops. “When you’re ready for whatever this is between us, I’ll be right here waiting for you.”
“What if I’m never ready?”
“Then I’ll be waiting forever,” he whispers before I hear more footsteps heading out of the kitchen.
I stay still, my gaze focused outside the window until the footsteps fade to nothing, and I crumple to the floor.
CHAPTEREIGHT
CALLEN
“It’s been almost a week,” I mumble to the empty room before flopping down on the sofa and checking my phone for the millionth time before dropping it beside me.
One week. Seven days. One hundred and sixty-eight hours. Ten thousand and eighty minutes. Six hundred and four thousand, eight hundred seconds. That’s how long it’s been since I last saw Ava.
I keep playing the last conversation I had with Ava over in my mind, searching for where I stuck my foot in my mouth and ruined everything. She’s goal-oriented. I knew that the first moment I met her. She holds on to those goals with an iron grasp, trying to keep her parents’ memory alive. I’ve been in her shoes before, and I know exactly how she feels. After Rebecca died, my entire world came crashing down. I wanted to crawl in on myself, but Clayton was there to help me pull my head out of my arse.
I decided I needed to make a change, not just because Rebecca asked me to but because it needed to happen. I was working myself to death, striving toward the ever-elusive goal of happiness. But I soon realized that no matter how much stuff I had, it would never bring her back. I had to live my life to the fullest for both of us, and I haven’t looked back since.
That’s all I wanted for Ava. I wanted to show her that there is more to life than living out the dreams of the dead even though we were the ones left behind. Neither of her parents would want her to forget how to live life by chaining herself to their dreams.
The shrill ring of the phone breaks the silence in the room, and I scramble to grab it.
“Ava?!” I shout into the phone.
“I see you’re still waiting for your girl to call.”
Fucking Clayton.
“You’re so lucky you’re my best friend,” I groan, wanting to get off the phone as soon as possible in case Ava calls.
“I’m your only friend.”
“What do you want?”
“Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed.”
“That would imply I’ve slept in my bed.” I drop my head onto the back of the sofa and let my eyes drift shut.
