There’s a knock at the door, but I don’t even get excited. It’s not Neely’s knock. It’s Haley’s. I don’t tell her to come in either, because I know she will whether she’s invited or not.
Sure enough, within a few minutes, she comes walking around the corner in the kitchen. She stops when she sees me.
“You look bad,” she says. “Good grief, Dane.”
“I’ve seen better days.”
“I believe that just by looking at you.” She hops up on a barstool at the island and watches me. “So, she left.”
“Yeah.”
I can’t even get riled up about it anymore. The anger is gone. It’s just disappointment and loneliness I can’t put into words.
I want to tell Haley this is a broken heart. This is what devastation feels like. But I don’t have the energy to even try.
“I will say,” Haley says, swinging her feet back and forth, “I’m surprised she left.”
“That makes two of us.”
“But I kind of like it.” She grins wildly.
My eyes close, then reopen slowly. “I’m sorry. I think I misheard you.”
“You didn’t. This will make for an epic romantic finale.”
My head falls to my hands. “She left me, Haley. There is no epic finale. It’s done. Kaput.”
“This is why you can’t call yourself a romantic.”
I pick up an orange and toss it from hand to hand. “Good thing I don’t see myself as a romantic then, huh?”
She snatches the orange out of the air. “What’s the plan?”
“The plan for what?”
“I don’t know. The plan to get her back? To forget her? To pull a Penn and screw so many women you forget who’s who?”
“Not that.” I hop on the counter, the cold marble kissing my ass. “I knew better than to screw that one, and I went against my rules.”
“So why did you?”
I look at her with a blank face. “Is that a serious question, Haley?”
“Yes. Why did you sleep with her if you knew, without a doubt, that it was wrong?” She hops off the chair and rounds the island. Her hands on the counter across from me, she leaps up and takes a seat. “Was she hot? Sexy? Did she come on to you?”
Blowing out a breath, I remember the way Neely felt against my body. The way she looked into my eyes and everything just felt right. Nothing mattered because I had her.
Except I didn’t.
“You want to know the truth?” I ask. I grip the corner of the counter and feel a sense of calm run across my skin. “I loved her, Hay. I really did.”
“You do love her then.”
“I guess I do.” I pick up another orange and throw it at her. She catches it with ease. “There. You happy now?”
“No. I won’t be happy until you’re happy. Well, I’ll be a lot happier in six months when I can go looking for my Prince Charming again.”
I consider something. “Maybe there are no happy endings. Maybe we’re all searching for this fairy tale because mass-market media shoves it in our faces, but maybe it’s all a made-up thing that we will never get.”
“Ew. Lies. All lies.” Haley gasps. “In fairy tales, they find the person they’re supposed to be with. It’s not two random people who just decide they want to hook up. It’s soul mates, finally coming together in the midst of a crazy scene and having to battle the world as a team.”
“I still think it’s stupid.”
“I still think you’re stupid,” she says. “But let’s get back to Neely.”
Just hearing her name hurts. It brings back a rush of memories that I don’t want to deal with. “Let’s not.” I get off the counter and lean against it instead. “I have one regret.”
“That you haven’t gone after her yet?”
“No,” I reply. “That I blew up at her. I was pissed.”
“Rightfully so.”
“I kind of lost it a little. It just set me off because I really believed she wouldn’t go, even though she kept telling me she was. How could she leave me? How could she leave Mia? They had plans. Neely was taking her to the Manicure Day with the gym.” I look at the ceiling and close my eyes. “I don’t even know how to tell her, Haley. She’s going to be destroyed.”
“Want me to do it? I can make it sound a little better than you, being that my heart isn’t broken.”
“I think it needs to come from me. As much as I don’t want it to, I think it’s best.” I blow out a breath. “I did this to her. I should be the one to take the brunt of it.”
She gets off the counter and stands beside me. She could not say a word and that would be fine. I get what she’s saying without the words needed to say them. But it’s Haley, and she won’t miss an opportunity to speak.
“Remember when you hired me?” she asks.
“Yes. Where’s this going?”
“Patience, Dane. Patience.” She pats my shoulder as she walks by. “You told me that day we’d have to work together to raise this kid. That we were a team. You wanted it seamless, remember?”
“And I think we nailed it.”
“We totally nailed it.” She grins. “I know a few things about you. Probably more than I want to, really. But one of those things is that you’d never, ever hurt Mia. Ever. So no more of the ‘I did this to her’ crap because I’m not going to listen to it. It’s not gonna fly with me, bud.”
Her words help more than she knows. “You’re all right, you know that?”
“Yeah, I know. Now, if you’re gonna live, I’m gonna go home and get some sleep. I have a feeling tomorrow is going to be a long day.”
“I’m good.” I let her grin warm me. “Thanks for coming by, Haley.”
“Anytime. Call me if you need me.”
And with that, she’s gone.
And I’m alone.
And missing Neely like it’s my damn job.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
NEELY
Excuse me,” I say, trying to slip by a handful of people on the street. Horns honk so loud around me, sirens wailing in the distance, that I’m not sure anyone even heard my voice. Or maybe they did and didn’t care. Either way, I get knocked sideways by only one person as I duck into my favorite coffee shop.
I spent last night strolling around my neighborhood, trying to get the energy of the city in my blood again. For some reason, the smells percolating through the manholes make my stomach crawl in a way that’s more violent than ever before.
Spying Grace at a little table in the corner, I make my way through the line.
“You’re home,” she gushes, giving me a quick hug. “I went ahead and got your coffee so you didn’t have to wait.”
“Are there always this many people here?” I grumble, sitting across from her.
She slow blinks. “Yes. Have you been gone that long?”
Shaking the cobwebs from my head, I take the coffee across from me. It’s rich and aromatic and everything a coffee should be. I bet Claire wouldn’t agree.
“So . . . ,” Grace prods, flipping a lock of hair off her shoulder. “What happened in the country?”
I open my mouth to tell her something, but it comes out as a tired exhale. Grace sets her cup down. There’s a bright-pink lipstick stain along the top.
“Okay. What’s going on?” she asks.
“Nothing. We aren’t ruining our reunion coffee with tales of my heartache.”
“Heartache?” She leans back in her chair, a tiny diamond stud glistening in her nose. “We need to get to the bottom of this.”
“There’s nothing to get to the bottom of,” I tell her. “I saw Dane a few times, as you know, and spent some days with him and his little girl.”
“The little girl who is a product of the reason you left in the first place?”
I ignore that. It’s not important. “Mia is adorable and a gymnast like me. What’s the chance of that happening?”
“You do realize you’re all gooey-eyed over a man and a little girl, right? I mean, if you’re cool with it, I’m cool with it, but I am worried about you.” She looks bewildered. “Out of all the potential things I saw happening with you going back there, this was not one of them. I’ll say that.”
I take a drink of my perfectly brewed coffee. It’s so spot-on, it’s almost annoying. “It doesn’t matter. I came back here.”
“Which thrills me because I was going nuts without you.” She throws up her hands. “When I got your text, I lost my cool in the middle of the salon. No one has any sense in this city, Neely. No one.”
“Well, I lost it in the middle of my apartment last night. You should’ve come over. We could’ve flipped out together.”
She furrows a brow. “What was wrong with you?”
“Oh, the people who live above me were pounding around all night. More car alarms went off than I thought possible. The hot water took ten years to warm. Need more?”
Grace laughs, her bangles clamoring together on her wrist. “You spent way too much time in the boonies.”
“No joke. It’s definitely going to take some time to readjust.”
To readjust. What a nice way to put it. I don’t need to adjust again to life here. What I need is to figure out why I feel like something is missing. Or wrong. I didn’t leave on the oven or a curling wand, and I picked up all my mail at the post office. So why on earth do I feel like something needs to be done?
“Neely?”
“Yeah,” I say, coming out of my daze. A dull throb taps away at my temple. I just want to close my eyes and go to sleep.
“Tell me about Dane.”
My eyes snap to my friend’s. She’s drinking her caffeine, watching me carefully.