Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 135604 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135604 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
It was as if I had never moved out.
Nine days. It had been nine days of no contact with Jamie. No calls. No texts. No middle-of-the-night lock picking.
I was a miserable mess.
I wanted to stay angry. And for the first three or four days, I did. I was pissed. I didn’t want to see him. I didn’t want to talk to him. I couldn’t believe how heartless he had been. How cold and unapologetic. Not caring how I felt about that interview. Not giving a damn how hurt I was. That didn’t matter to Jamie. He wasn’t sorry. In his eyes, I was overreacting and getting emotional over something stupid.
He didn’t get it. He didn’t get what being claimed by him meant to me.
Everything. God, it meant everything.
I’m not crazy. I understood his point—Jamie didn’t like getting personal in those interviews. He was there to talk about surfing. That was it.
I got that.
But I really thought he would at least mention something about us, anything about us, when prompted, and when I saw that he hadn’t, I wasn’t just surprised, I was hurt. Deep in my heart, I felt that.
You can’t help how you react to things. And that was my reaction. I wasn’t about to keep that from Jamie. He wanted all of my truths, and I wanted him to have them. I didn’t want anything between us. So I shared.
I thought he would understand. I wanted him to understand. To talk to me about it and not make me feel stupid for reacting the way I did. But he couldn’t do that.
In his eyes, I was wrong. That’s all he was seeing. He became mean. Callous. He brushed off my reaction as if it meant nothing. And that hurt me more than anything.
But I didn’t show him that. I stayed angry, and I held on to that anger for as long as I could.
I worked and I slept and I avoided. Even going as far as to take my house off the market so I could keep up with this plan. I refused to see Jamie, and being in the same house would make that a challenge. I couldn’t be around him. I was too angry. I refused to talk about him. I refused to think about him. For days, I kept this up. But when you care about someone as much as I cared about him, when you loved someone the way I loved Jamie, whole heart, down-the-road kind of love, it was impossible to keep that pain out.
I started missing him. A little at first. Just for a second, and then in a single breath it became all I felt. At home and at night and at work. I missed him everywhere. I cried when he didn’t come in to Whitecaps to claim a booth, and later into sheets that wrapped around me and smelled like summer. I ate takeout on my couch and gave up all use of my dining room table. I doodled Jamie’s name while I listened for him, the sound of his bike or his key in the lock, and it killed me on days seven and eight and now when I still didn’t hear it.
My heart wanted me to go to Jamie, but it needed him to come to me. And I was over wanting a sorry from him. I just wanted him. Jamie wouldn’t need to say a word.
Just come here, my heart begged. Hold me. We won’t make it to day ten.
A knock on the front door sounded.
I gasped, eyes widening in hope-filled panic as my heart lifted its tear-stricken face. Jamie.
I pushed up and quickly stood from the couch, crossing the room in a sprint. “Please please please please,” I whisper begged, reaching the door with clammy hands and pulse racing. I twisted the knob and swung it open, mouth readying to greet Jamie with a “sorry” for both of us.
The word never left me.
“Oh.” I blinked, jerking back at the sight of Brian standing on my porch. I shifted my weight on my feet, looking up at him.
He was tall, built like Jamie, but you wouldn’t know he was a surfer just by looking at him. He didn’t have the sun on his skin the way Jamie did. His hair was buzzed short, not falling into his eyes and damp from the ocean. He wasn’t summer in November.
Brian was gorgeous all the same, though. Even right now, dark eyebrows drawn together, eyes heavy with something and jaw more chiseled than usual, meaning he was clenching it.
Crap. Was he angry at me?
“Hey. What’s up?” I greeted him, keeping my voice unknowing just in case I was reading him wrong, which could’ve been the case. I hadn’t known Brian all that long. I didn’t know all of his tells. “Is Syd okay?”