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But just as surely as he knew that, he also knew he couldn’t do it. He’d have to suffer and miss her, and someday, if he were very lucky, maybe it wouldn’t hurt so bad.
“Yeah, fucking right, asshole,” he growled, wincing at the blinding sun as he checked the road to the west again.
He pulled out onto the highway, and the piercing screech of skidding tires filled his consciousness a split second before the bone-crunching crash, shockingly loud, a heavy impact throwing him against the driver’s side of his truck.
His head smacked into the driver’s side window, a split second of blinding pain, then instantly his world went black.
Chapter 26
The indoor hotel pool was one of the swankier she’d ever been to, and the fact it was in Music City made it that much more remarkable. Even the towels set out at numerous locations around the huge, oblong pale blue pool were so white and fluffy they looked like they’d never been used.
The scent of chlorine was distinct on the air, as was a savory, smoky note drifting in from the upscale steakhouse featured as the hotel’s signature restaurant next door to the pool.
She’d come down from the suite her dad had secured; Mitchell had flown back from the UK immediately after she’d disclosed to him that she and Max were involved. Despite coming back to ostensibly offer her support, he’d been constantly on the phone, his laptop open, files and figures strewn across the desk in the en suite office.
She couldn’t stand listening to him drone on any further about work crap, so decided to flee down to the pool. Surprisingly, aside from a couple of kids playing in the shallow end, pale yellow floaties wrapped about their upper arms, the cavernous room occasionally echoing with their cries of delight as they splashed each other, the place was essentially deserted.
Scrolling through her messages, she’d been keeping a running back and forth conversation with Amber, already wishing she was back at the sorority house.
After the conversation with her best friend, things had gotten better. A little, anyway. Though she still ached, she’d begun to see that maybe she really had done what was necessary. It didn’t mean it wasn’t still a fuck-up… but sometimes in life you had to just take the ‘L’ and move on.
In time, and with space, perhaps it wouldn’t seem so bleak.
Yeah, keep telling yourself that, idiot.
She hated that inner voice with a passion, but it didn’t mean she didn’t listen to it, too. Much as she might wish she knew how to turn it off.
The water in the pool at the deep end, where she reclined on a stained-wood chaise lounge, a towel laid over her legs, was shimmering, the patterns of the tiny waves combining, then diverging, then colliding again. The water in the collecting pool in that cave had done the same.
Stop it.
The ache in her heart flared anew as she replayed it, how special it had been, their connection deeper than she thought possible between two people in that moment in time. But what made those moments so precious was their fleeting nature… and the knowledge that one might never experience the like ever again.
She sighed with it, laying her head back against the chaise. “Max… God, Max… why did this happen?” She whispered it, but even giving those thoughts voice had the tears springing to her eyes once more.
You’ve got to move on, Kelsey. You’re torturing yourself.
Though she knew she had to, ending that torment was the first step in forgetting about those wonderful moments with him, in letting her memories fade into nothingness. The mere prospect of that made her heart twist in her chest.
Her phone suddenly buzzed, a number she didn’t recognize popping up on her screen. She was about to send it to voicemail… until she noted the area code.
It was 509.
Max?
“Hello?” Though she had no way of knowing how or why, she knew this couldn’t possibly be good.
“Is this Kelsey? This is the number that I found on the note in Max’s kitchen.” The voice was deep, with a resonance that was totally unlike Max’s, and her stomach began to twist. It was familiar, but she couldn’t quite place it.
“Who’s this? This is Kelsey—but you’re not Max.”
The voice on the other end sighed. “No, honey, I’m not. It’s George Wickham. We met… a while back. Do you remember me?”
Her cheeks flamed hot as the memory flooded back to her, presented naked before him in the sun. Her embarrassment at the time—and something else entirely—only made her mortification worse. “I… yes, I do. Hi, George. Where’s… where’s Max?”
For a long moment, the line was silent. “Max has been in an accident, honey. He’s hurt pretty badly.”
Oh, my dear God.
