front of me now was a stranger, and I hated it.
“The bigger the heart, the bigger the target. Guess who was the first person to teach me that lesson?” She shifted her weight and bent down to pick up her fallen phone. “This is a short flight, so sit there and be quiet until we land. You can tell Lennon you gave it your best shot, but I shut you down. You can also pass along that this little stunt lost her a client and a friend.” She turned her gaze to the screen of the phone and made it clear she planned on ignoring me for the rest of the flight.
My mind started whirling, frantically searching for any way to get her to give just a little. It seemed like I’d underestimated the impact my selfish choices had had on her. As well as how serious Lennon had been about losing her job if I couldn’t sway Maren to the side of forgiveness and collaboration. I thought there was hope to bury the hatchet. It never occurred to me she would still be angry enough that the only place said hatchet would be buried was five inches deep in my skull.
Maren
IT TOOK EVERY ounce of willpower I possessed not to openly stare at Salinger for the remainder of the flight. I spent forty-five minutes arguing with him, which left an hour for the shock of seeing him again to dissipate. It also left plenty of time for curiosity to creep under my defenses.
He was still as cute and as charismatic as ever. He definitely didn’t look like a teenager anymore. Even back in the day, he always seemed taller and broader than the boys I remembered from high school. Now, he was filled out even more, if still on the lean side. His features were sharp, which gave him a slightly predatory look that he’d grown into. His dark eyes were always dark, mysterious, and unreadable, even when he was too young to have the kind of secrets that needed to be hidden. Now, they appeared even shadowy, and the secrets appeared to have doubled. His messy blond hair was the same, but it was darker than I recalled, especially at his roots. It made him look like he’d just crawled out of bed after a rough night. When he was younger, the tousled, sunny locks made him look carefree and wild. As an adult, the style made him look undeniably sexy. Combined with all the new ink that was liberally scrawled across his visible skin, Salinger now gave off a dangerous vibe that was much more fitting to his personality than his youthful good looks had been.
Before, it was easy to underestimate him. Looking at him now, no one would ever assume he was an innocent, easily influenced kind of guy. He looked like he had been living hard the last few years, like a lot of his bad choices had finally caught up to him. Unfortunately, the rougher, more edgy vibe he was working with these days really worked for him.
It probably really worked on the large portion of the population who couldn’t resist a bad boy. Lucky for me, boys who were bad had never attracted me. I liked to think I was too levelheaded and reasonable to be swayed by a sexy smirk and bad attitude wrapped up in torn jeans and scuffed combat boots. But, if I was completely honest with myself, I had to admit I was curious about just how many tattoos he’d put on his body in the time we’d been apart and where they were all located. The look suited him.
My ex had a few, but they were cliché, and I knew he only got them to fit his image of what he thought a rockstar should look like. There was nothing special about them, whereas Salinger’s looked like they had taken hours and hours under the needle and some serious thought and inspiration. He’d gotten good at storytelling as he’d gotten older, so I wondered if the artwork was another way he’d found to express himself throughout the years.
I huffed out an annoyed breath, bothered by the fact that I was wondering about him at all. It wasn’t easy to sit in the small plane in complete silence, but I refused to engage with him any more than I already had. I was worried that if he kept talking, he was going to wear me down and make me