blink back the reckless tears from my eyes. Because the truth is, I believe him. And the truth is something that took years for me to understand. He wasn’t the only one who walked away, who did everything he could to avoid the situation. He had guilt, and I had secrets. And we avoided each other because we loved each other. And that love for each other was greater than the love we had for ourselves.
Leo
“Did you know Mia’s mom is a bitch?” Lucy is shitfaced. She’s sprawled across the backseat of my truck, and she hasn’t stopped talking about Mia. Thankfully, she’s gotten off the subject of me fucking Mia.
“Yep,” I murmur, checking the rearview to make sure she isn’t about to hurl. She’s so fucking small, and it’s not that she drinks too much; it’s just that she drinks too many when she does.
“Did you know that her dad is, like, loaded?”
“Yep.”
“Did you know that she’s here to get divorce papers signed?”
“Yep.”
“How scandalous.”
“Yep.”
She grunts, and when I check for her between the seats, her face is right there—an inch from mine. “Does she know?” She’s looking at me with accusatory eyes like she used to when we were kids and she was asking if any of us had been in her room.
“Know what?” I huff. I’m not annoyed that she’s drunk or that she’s talking about Mia. It’s those eyes. They scare me.
“That you took a picture of her on my phone when you were kids?”
My eyes widen, and I do that lame headshake thing as if it needs that little jolt to make sure your mind is working, because there’s no possible way I heard what I just heard.
My reaction must be answer enough because Lucy smiles her Drunk Lucy smile and sits back down. “When you delete pictures on the phone, it just goes to a deleted folder.” Her eyes lock on mine though the rearview, suddenly sober, and knowing. “Things don’t just stop existing, Leo. Not unless you want them to.”
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Mia
It’s day five, and I’m at my wit’s end. I need to go home. I have things to do and people to see and work waiting for me. I can’t just sit here anymore, in a hotel room, in limbo, waiting for my mother to concede. She wants money—lots of it. Dad’s willing to give her some. It’s me who’s not ready to give her shit. She may have birthed me, but beyond that, she has done nothing. Not for me, not for Dad, and definitely not for Papa.
The hotel phone rings, which is odd, because besides the occasional—okay, like twice a day—room service, they tend to leave me alone. Perks of being in their version of a “presidential suite.”
I answer with a quick, wary, “Hello?”
“Miss Kovács?”
“Yes…?”
“Sorry to disturb you, ma’am.” Ugh, I hate being called ma’am. ”You have a guest down at the reception. Should I send him up to your room?”
Guest? Him? What the… “No, I’ll come down.”
“Okay, ma’am.”
I don’t bother changing out of my yoga pants and sweatshirt or even looking in the mirror before slipping on my sneakers and grabbing my phone and key card. The private elevator is connected directly off the living room, so I don’t have to wait for the doors to open. It takes no time to get to the ground level, and when the doors part, I see him. His back is to me, but I can tell who it is, and suddenly, stupidly, I regret not making more of an effort with my appearance. I stand in the elevator and give myself a moment to simply rearrange my thoughts until they’re all lined up, and I can think clearly. Leo’s dressed in the familiar way I’ve often seen him, dark denim and long sleeve tee with the sleeves pushed up. The receptionist, who I assume was the one to make the call, is talking to him, smiling, most likely flirting. If I was any other girl, I’d probably do the same. And then she stops talking because she’s pointing toward me, and I’m still standing in the elevator looking at his back. When he turns, it takes everything in me not to press a button, any button, so that I can disappear.
The other day, when Lucy was a buffer, things were fine. Now? It’s just him and me, and what the hell is he doing here?
He’s only a few yards away, but I feel like the effort it will take my legs to get