The Best of Winter Renshaw - An 8 Book Collection - Winter Renshaw Page 0,227

emphatic “Yes” and toss a dirty t-shirt into my hamper. “Please don’t worry about me. I’m going to be fine. I promise.”

“Hey, hey,” Fernando says from the doorway. His v-neck t-shirt hugs his muscled runner’s body, and his dark hair is damp like he just showered. He smiles, dimples and big teeth, and gives me a nod “hello.” “Look who’s back. You missed us?”

“Only for a week, then I’m heading back,” I say. “And yes, I missed you both. Congrats on the script.”

“Thank you.” He grins ear to ear, his eyes lighting. As a writer, I know that feeling—someone deemed your work worthy and entertaining. It’s validating, and it puts you on cloud nine with a high twenty times more addictive than morphine.

“You want to go out tonight with Fernando and I?” Viv offers.

“I’m meeting my mom tonight,” I say.

Viv pouts, climbing off my bed and heading to her man. She slips her arm under his, her hands resting around his hips, and he leans down to kiss her forehead. I’ve never met two people more perfect for each other than these two. They click. They fit. They just work. It’s so effortless, it’s scary sometimes.

He gets her. She gets him.

Sometimes they stay up all night just talking.

And he listens. He clings to her every word like it’s the most important thing he’s ever heard, even if she’s talking about guacamole recipes or some new bag she wants to buy. Last I knew, he was teaching her Spanish.

Sigh.

I want that. I want that contentedness, that diehard, inseparable, effortless love.

Viv and Fernando leave me be, shutting my door behind them, and I finish unpacking. My phone buzzes in my bag, and my mind immediately goes to Rhett before reminding myself that it wouldn’t—couldn’t be him.

I think about him, wondering what he’s doing right now, this very second. Wondering what we’d be doing if I were still there and I didn’t walk out the way I did yesterday. And then I wonder if he’s thinking about me, missing me like I’m missing him.

Taking my phone, I tap my code in and check my messages.

Mom: CALL ME WHEN YOU LAND, PLZ.

I send her a quick message confirming our plans for tonight, and then I pull up my old messages from Rhett. An insanely irrational urge to text him washes over me, and my fingers begin to peck out a quick message.

But I stop myself, deleting the words like they were never there to begin with.

We’re over.

We can’t proceed without the truth.

And once he knows the truth, he’ll want nothing to do with me anyway.

Twenty-Two

Rhett

* * *

She’s not my fucking girlfriend.

I exhale, hovering over my phone, re-reading old text messages from Ayla.

It’s been a week since she left to go back home, and to be honest, I don’t even know when she’s coming back. Or if. I didn’t ask. I didn’t want her to know I cared because, goddamn it, I cared.

I don’t want to care.

I shouldn’t care.

Maybe the tiniest sliver of me feels guilty for not holing up in my apartment, mourning Damiana. They say time heals all wounds, but I suspect time heals them quicker when you’re not thinking about that gaping gash in your chest—when your time and energy and thoughts are concentrated on something else altogether. I also suspect that one day you look down and those wounds are healed over, nothing but fading scars you can trace with your fingertips.

Ayla’s an invisible salve that dulls the pain, hides the scab, and heals the cut.

And I found every excuse I could to let her go.

She left, and I didn’t try to stop her. Instead I justified it every way I could.

And I’ve felt the aftereffects of that for seven fucking days.

I scroll through some of our old messages, smirking when I read some of her one-liners and sarcastic quips. Inhaling, I can almost conjure up the scent of the sweet almond lotion she was wearing the last time I saw her, and I can almost imagine the soft glide of her cashmere skin beneath my fingertips.

It’s only a moment later when the screen of my phone lights up, and I’m convinced I’m seeing things.

“Are you home?” Ayla asks on the other end before I have a chance to so much as say hello.

“I am.”

She ends the call, and I’m really fucking confused. I’m two seconds from dialing her back when there’s a knock at the door.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about you,” she says, breathless, the second I swing the door