by K. Bromberg
“Cinder,” he says in that low rumble of his and the damn nickname has tears springing to my eyes. I tell myself to step back when he reaches out to touch my face. I yell at myself to retreat when he frames my cheeks in his hands.
“It’s okay,” I say, not sure if that’s more for him or for me.
We stare at each other for the longest of moments. His eyes swim with the emotion I need to hear on his lips, but haven’t heard.
“Where are you going?”
“I grabbed a flight—”
“Why would—”
“You have meetings here for a few days still. You don’t need me here for those and you sure as hell don’t need me to mess up your routine. It’s for the better.”
“Let me get the jet ready—”
“It’s fine. I don’t need that. I’ll never need that.” I close my eyes for a beat and when I open them, I’ve found the resolve that was wavering. “Thank you for everything, Zane.”
He rubs his thumb over my bottom lip as he nods ever so slightly before our lips meet. It’s the most tender of kisses. The only one in my life I can truly say I’ve felt deep in my bones. And the only one I can say without doubt I never wanted to end.
I step back and try to smile through the tears before grabbing my bag and walking out the door. My heels echo, one after another, an audible testament to the fact that I’m leaving.
When my hand grasps the handle and pulls, Zane puts his hand on the door and shuts it. “Stay, Harlow. Just stay and we can talk and figure things out. I can’t make you promises but . . .”
I look at him and see everything I want, but there’s a portion of him that I know is still closed off.
That’s the part I want.
That’s the part I deserve.
I hang my head for a beat and look back up to meet those gorgeous emerald eyes I love. “Don’t ask out of reflex. Think about it. Figure it out. The first time you chased after me, it was with a pair of shoes. If you want to chase again, I need a little bit more of the fairytale or else I don’t want it at all.” I reach out and squeeze his hand and realize how daunting that must sound to a man who swears love is a fabricated emotion. “I’m not asking for it all, I just need to know that you’ll open yourself up to the chance at love. Loving someone and knowing there will never be the same thing felt in return is a miserable way to live.”
“Can we talk—”
“Shh.” I put a finger to his lips and it takes everything I have not to step into his arms and stay right there. To let him talk me into whatever he wants to because this pain in my chest is enough swallow me whole. “Zane Phillips, you deserve the kind of love that makes you believe in love.”
And without another word and with my resolve hanging by a thread, I walk down the corridor with my head held high and my heart breaking in two on the floor at his feet.
“MORE THAN TWO TONIGHT?” THE bartender asks.
“Tonight calls for a helluva lot more than two, Barney,” I say with a nod as a plane roars overhead on takeoff.
“Lady troubles?”
“Something like that.” I down the drink in my hand and look across the way to gate forty-nine where Harlow sits. “Just keep them coming.”
She’s curled in a ball on the chair with her knees tucked up to her chin and her arms wrapped around them.
“Is your plane not ready?” Barney asks. He’s my usual bartender when I pass through JFK airport and knows my routine.
“The jet’s ready, but I’m not flying out for a day or two though.” I realize how weird that sounds, but I don’t explain about the ticket I had to buy just to get past the security gates and he doesn’t ask.
Instead I just watch her, my own form of personal torture for not succeeding in making her stay.
For not being able to give her what she needs.
My chest tightens again. The same damn way it has since I couldn’t find her at the launch party. And then again when I watched her walk away.
Correction. When I let her walk away.
So now I sit and torture myself with something I can’t have just so I can make sure she gets aboard safely. Just so I can know she’s okay.
Because I’m sure as fuck not okay.
Not by a goddamn long shot.
Do you love her, mate? Can you actually say you love her?
Love is a bullshit emotion.
My canned response lilts through my mind and for the first time in as long as I can remember, I don’t buy into my own bullshit.
Because this feeling that I’m feeling? This sick to my stomach because she’s there and I’m here and she wants everything and I’m not sure if I can fucking give it to her—this isn’t anything I’ve ever felt before.
You deserve the kind of love that makes you feel in love.
Christ.
Is that what this is? Love? Because if that’s the case it feels like goddamn misery.
Only because you’re here and she’s there, mate.
What is it you want from her then? A booty call every now and again? To lie in bed at night and laugh till your stomach hurts from her silly antics? To close down an arcade playing pinball and Galaga because it’s so goddamn fun to feel like a kid again and to have someone let you be that way? To be scared out of your wits end, facing one of your biggest fears, but have her eyes to look into and her hands to hold? To talk about work over your morning coffee and have someone really listen? To pull all kinds of strings—strings you don’t even have—to try and help out her career because she damn well deserves it?
Fucking hell. What do you want Phillips? Because out of all of those things, only one of them has to do with sex.
I slide the empty glass away and grab the fresh one Barney places in front of me.
The old me knows what I would have wanted. To walk over there and tell her she’s not going anywhere and bring her back to my place. We’d have a great time living it up in the city for the next couple of days. Then we’d leave for home, part ways once we got there, and walk away free and clear and tired as fuck.
The new me . . . Christ. I run a hand through my hair and blow out a frustrated sigh. The new me is right back where I was when this whole thing started—wanting to stay as far away from Harlow as possible because she scares the shit out of me all the while fixated on the fact that I can’t stop thinking about her. Or wanting her. Or needing her.
But I can’t give her what she wants . . . what she deserves. I can’t be her knight in shining armor.
I can’t change who I am.
You deserve the kind of love that makes you believe in love
Or can I?
“YOU’RE MAKING A MISTAKE BY sending that text, mija.”
I glance over my shoulder to my mother. Behind her is the kitchen and the postage stamp backyard, all the same but they feel so very different.
It’s been two months—on the road, exploring, experiencing, growing—and it’s only given me a hankering to want more. Out of my career. Out of my life. Out of everything.
It’s also been a very good lesson in how you can’t control who your heart falls in love with.
Lula snuggles in beside me, and I run a hand absently over her fur. She hasn’t left my side in the two days since I’ve returned and I can’t figure out if it’s because she missed me or if it’s because she knows I’m sad and her dog radar has picked it up.
“He’s on the news again, Low,” she calls from where she’s watching TV. Just like she has every time she’s seen Zane or the two of us on it since I’ve been back. With the launch being such an enormous success, it seems like she’s saying it every couple of minutes.
Or maybe it’s just because it still hurts to even think about him.
I hope this gets easier.
For some reason I’m not sure it will.
What I do know now though, is that being removed from the situation—from the constant togetherness where we were forced to be each other’s entertainment, the one we’d take our frustration
out on, and comfort when we needed it—has made things feel less . . . intense. As if when you’re in the situation you can’t stop thinking about it, but once you’re able to step outside of it, the emotion doesn’t seem as powerful.
That’s such bullshit, Low.
Feed him that line—feed your mom that line—but be honest with yourself and admit that you miss him more than you ever thought possible. That you’re questioning yourself and whether you should have taken his offer to leave things how they were because maybe, eventually, they could have grown into something more.
“Robert said that he might extend your contract, mija. That you’re needed to help some more since the campaign was so successful. If you send that text, you might not get it.”
“On the contrary.” I sigh. “I need to send it to prove to Zane that I can be professional. That it was all a mistake and that I won’t be difficult to work with.”
And maybe I just want to send it to see if he replies.
Or maybe he’s cut his losses and figured Simone will get her shot.
I hate myself for holding out hope that maybe he’d come around. That he’d call or rush to the airport to beg me to stay or be waiting on my porch.
Oh my God. When did I become my mother? When did that hopeless romanticism take over my thoughts and skew my opinions?
It’s that damn L-word. Love and everything that comes with it.
But if we’re truly done, what did he tell Robert about us? How is he explaining why I left when he’s still there?
“Regardless, you don’t need him,” she says with a shoo of her hand. “Your email is dinging with people wanting to talk to you about jobs. He’s served his purpose.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“You are going to respond to those emails, aren’t you?”
I close my eyes. “Of course, Mom. Just . . . I need a few days, okay?” My voice breaks and hell if that wasn’t a beacon calling her to come sit on the couch and comfort me.
She snuggles in beside me and smooths down the back of my hair. “Mija—”
“I’m fine.” I wipe the lone tear away that I let escape.
“This is my fault you’re hurting. I pushed you to tell him. I fostered this with my silly notions. I should have kept my mouth shut.”
“It’s not your fault. I knew going into it how he felt, I was just a stupid girl and let my emotions get the best of me.”
“He’ll come around, mija. The way he looked at you in the videos from the party . . . he’ll come around.” I smile at her but don’t believe it. “Just remember this, if you leaving doesn’t affect him, then in truth, your time with him never really mattered in the first place.”
“Yeah. It still sucks.”
“It does.” She pats my head and then kisses the top of my head before heading back to her place and leaving me in silence.
With a deep sigh and an exhaustion so bone deep I just want to sleep for days, but know when I close my eyes I’ll see the look on his face when I walked away, I study the text on my phone:
Congrats on the successful launch. I’ve been following it from home and couldn’t be more proud to have been a part of it with you. Thank you for the experience, for the memories it provided, and my apologies on how I left things. I was caught up in the moment, caught up in the little world we’d lived in together, and now that I’ve stepped outside of it, I know that it would have never worked between us.
The blinking cursor at the end taunts me to push send.
To stack another lie on top of a relationship that was fostered from them.
I take a deep breath.
Sigh.
And push send.
“I FUCKED THIS UP, SMUDGE.”
I look back down at the text for what feels like the hundredth time. She fucking wrote me off just like that?
Smudge looks up at me as drool hangs from his mouth as if to say, “It’s been a week and the text hasn’t changed, so why the hell are you still looking at it?”
Good question.
I lean back in my chair, drop my phone on the table, and pick up my cup of coffee. The coffee house is packed. People coming in and rushing out, already late for their meetings. At a table in the corner is a man on his laptop, and ironically, he has SoulM8 up on his screen. No one else would know it by the discrete layout we set up, but I notice it. The little girl a table to the right of me is drinking her hot chocolate while her mom snuggles up against her dad, and I’m just about to look away when she slurps the end of the contents with her straw.
Slurps with her straw.
Harlow is fucking everywhere even when I don’t want her to be.
“Love is pretty damn fantastic isn’t it?” Robert says when he takes his seat across from me, his newly refilled cup in his hand, and lifts a chin in the direction of the family I was just looking at.
“It is,” I murmur in response.
“That’s it? It is? Nothing more to add than that?”
“What’s that supposed to mean, mate?”
“You miss her don’t you?”
It takes me a sharp second to realize what he just said and hold back my honest response—hell yes, I do—and collect myself enough to meet his eyes without giving my shock away.
“What’s that?” I ask to cover.
“You miss her. You were together and now she’s gone and you realize how damn shitty it is not being with her anymore.”
“What are you talking about?” I chuckle softly as I try to figure him out.
“C’mon, Zane. You guys did a great job keeping up pretenses and acting the part so that no one had a clue, but I knew you guys weren’t together from the start. I told you, I’m a smart man. Hell, she was hostile and spoke her mind and you were cocky and thought you knew it all.” He shrugs with a smug smile as he leans back in his chair and takes a slow sip of his coffee before looking back at me. “You were perfect for each other.”
“Are you telling me you set this all up? Set us up?” I can barely get the words out as I try to process what I’m hearing.
“I invested the money in SoulM8 for Sylvie. To give her a lasting legacy. But there was something about you, Zane, that reminded me of me when I was young. A well-earned arrogance. An air that you don’t need anyone or anything. An attitude that you have everything figured out when the one thing you need most in life you haven’t got a goddamn clue about.” Robert waves to the little girl with the hot chocolate and smiles before turning back to me. “I was you. Contrary to what I tell everybody else, I thought I’d date Sylvie a time or two and then move on. Who needed one woman? Who needed that bullshit called love?” He chuckles as he thinks back and as I try to pick my jaw up off the floor. “I was wrong. So wrong and cocky too. I thought I knew everything and I almost passed up the best thing that ever happened in my life because of it. Maybe I saw some of me in you and some of Sylvie in Harlow and maybe . . . just maybe, I wanted to give you the best gift you never knew existed.”
“You’re shitting me?”
“Nope.”
“So the whole trust course and reality TV—oh my god. It was all a set-up.”
“You needed a little push,” he says unapologetically, “and it was great for advertising.”
“We sold your lie,” I murmur.
“No, you sold the fairytale.”
I blink several times as I stare at him, hearing that word again, and trying to make sense of everything. “I don’t even know what to say.”
“Say that you miss her. Admit that you love her. I know it scares the hell out of you, but that churning in your gut and tightening in your chest every time you think about her? That’s your answer. That’s what you’re going to feel like when you’re not with her.” He takes one more sip of coffee as he stands from his seat and plops a manila envelope onto the table. “There’s her contract for more work if you want to use her. It’s up to you to figure out what you want from here.”
“Robert—”
“Have a good rest of the af
ternoon, Zane. Later Smudge.”
And he walks off without saying another word and leaving me completely stunned.
I’ve been played. Fucking played in a game I had no idea I was in but hell if I’m going to stand on the sidelines anymore.
I STARTLE WHEN I LOOK at my cell and see Zane’s name. I’ve been looking at it like this for every time it’s rung over the past ten days and not once has it given me the name I wanted . . . and now that it does, I’m afraid to pick it up.
“Hello?”
Play it cool, Low.
“Cinder?”
His voice. That nickname. Every part of me vibrates at the sound of it and hates that my reaction is still so strong considering how miserable I’ve been.
“Hi.”
“How are you?” he asks, concern in his voice I don’t want to hear.
“Good. Great,” I say without thinking and immediately am brought back to that first week on the bus together. The frustration, the sexual tension, the defiance.
“Care to elaborate?” I can hear the smile in his voice.
“I’m just sorting through some offers that have come in since the launch.”
“Any good ones?”
“A few.”
“Well, I have another one, in the form of a contract for you in my hands.”
My heart drops into my stomach at hearing those words. Work. Not me. That’s why he’s calling.
“You do?” I force myself to say.
“Mmm-hmm. Robert stopped by earlier today after I asked him to write one up for you to stay on with SoulM8 as its official spokesperson.” I don’t respond, can’t, as I think of how hard it would be to work with him day-in and day-out and still feel this way about him.