Holiday with You - Claudia Burgoa Page 0,56
posting the job on several websites. Hopefully, we’ll have a few applicants to help us renovate the place.”
“You are in denial.”
“No, I’m practical,” I inform him.
“You’re an idiot.”
“I’d beg to differ, but today, I don’t care if you call me names.”
“Go fight for her.”
“She doesn’t want me.”
“You caught her off guard, then confessed how we deceived her.” He summarizes the worst night of my life.
And I thought the worst one had been getting drunk in college and having my stomach pumped. I thought I was dying.
“I told her I loved her,” I said slowly. “What is there to fight for when someone doesn’t love me back?”
“Did she say that?” he asks. “With those exact words? I don’t love you.”
“No, but what am I supposed to do? She has a job and a life. She’s right. I can’t just uproot her.”
“But you can leave,” he suggests. “Perry’s going to be okay here, in LA, or wherever you take her because one thing she has is a father who loves her. Your business here is going to be fine too. You know how to manage your people. Go open something else in California. It’s a two-hour flight from there. You can come here often.”
“You say it as if it’s so easy.” I'd already uprooted my little girl once. She has stability, friends, family here. It isn't fair to upend her life again, especially now that she's growing up and taking everything in. Can I change her world again to chase what I want? But isn't Audrey what she needs too?
He shakes his head. “No, it’ll take time for you to figure everything out, but if someone can do it, it would be you.”
I wave at him and leave. We can discuss this for hours, but nothing he’ll say will convince me. When I go across the street to visit Becky, I’m knocked with yet another memory. “We’re running out of peppermint mocha, Colin. Do you want the last cup?”
I nod and sip it while walking back to pick up Perry. Morgan isn’t right, but he isn’t totally wrong either. Audrey and I left a few things unfinished. I need her to tell me she doesn’t love me. We have to wrap everything up and tie this issue with a bow before we disregard it. I have to see her one last time. Tell her I’m miserable without her and that she’s right, it was unfair of me to expect more when we haven’t been together for long.
But also tell her she’s wrong. Because I have watched true love for years in my parents’ marriage. It’s not perfect, but the openness and love and genuine respect were what I knew I never had in Remi. But with Audrey? It was there. It can be there.
There’s another way, and I’ll find it soon.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Audrey
I spent three nights in that hotel.
Mostly because it hurt too much to be awake. And I didn’t want to go back to LA to my lonely apartment or ridiculously empty life.
I just want Colin and Perry, right before the moment he dropped the bombshell. When I was blissfully ignorant of the lies. When I’d felt so close to figuring out what I wanted to do, even if it was crazy.
He’d taken that chance from me.
In the aftermath, I’m pretty sure my eyes will be permanently red and irritated from crying, and I’ll eventually grow used to the pain in my chest. It hasn’t dulled. If anything, it’s intensified.
Once I make it to Las Vegas, I stop at an In-N-Out Burger and manage to get a few bites down. Sitting in the parking lot, I think about the last couple of weeks without the haze of anger.
Though the illusion of Winter Valley is gone, I’m changed.
Are you really going back to the way you were before?
I think about countless nights at the office. About the woman who has made my life hell. About how I never get to see a project from start to finish.
No. I’m most definitely not going back to the way I was before.
I shove a french fry in my mouth and grab my phone. For a second, I stare at what I’ve typed on the screen. Can I do this? Should I do this?
Before I can talk myself out of doing what I know is right, I hit send.
Audrey Reed: I quit
I wait for the moment of panic. The instant when I text Aurora back and tell her I sent that to the wrong person. But it