“Where is she?” I was finally catching my breath, and the room was coming into focus. Amelia wasn’t here. I had Love Actuallyed my heart out, but I had still been too late. Well, actually, as Sharon, my new BFF at Delta, had informed me, it was less Love Actually and more The Parent Trap, because I was trying to beat the woman I loved home. It didn’t seem nearly as romantic to me, but I had acquiesced because I thought doing so would get me on an earlier flight. I was right.
“Her flight was delayed. She isn’t even home yet.”
I sank back on the sofa.
But then the door flew open and Amelia walked through it in jeans and a T-shirt, which she looked amazing in, I might add. She looked from Martin to me and said casually, “Whatcha doin’?”
Now I looked at Martin, like he was going to help me out of this situation.
“Where is my boss?” Martin asked, throwing daggers out his eyes at Amelia.
“Oh, um, home, I presume. Or, if he is to be believed, at a bar somewhere, trying to forget that I exist.”
Martin sighed dramatically and stood up. “This is why you don’t set your boss up.” He waved his hand, pulled out his phone, and said, “Well, I’d better get on Find My Friends and fix this mess you’ve made. Thank God I’m a fixer for a living.” He pointed at Amelia and said, his voice laced with annoyance, “I’ll deal with you later.”
She smiled weakly and looked at me again, a little nervously. I wouldn’t say that I necessarily knew Amelia better than anyone else in the world, but I knew her well enough to know that that face meant she was scared that I was here to make a grand confession of love. Which I was not.
I stood up and took her bag from her. She stepped inside her living room, and I said, “Are you okay?”
She nodded. “I just didn’t see any point in moving in when we want different things.”
I stepped closer to her. “And what do you want?”
“I don’t want marriage or babies or any of that, but I also don’t love the idea of it being completely taken off the table. It feels so… final.” She shrugged. “Park, what are you doing here?”
I weighed my options. I could tell her. Or I could be cool. And she had likely had a very emotional day. So I decided on cool. “Well, we never discussed that article I sent you.”
She crossed her arms and smirked. “Uh-huh. You flew to New York to talk about an article?”
“You know how serious I am about literature.”
“I read it,” she said. “I thought it was fascinating. I love that the couple adopted their embryos out to friends. I have an interview scheduled with them next week, so thank you for that. I think I can finally put this story to bed.”
I smiled. I knew she would like that. “What was your favorite part?” I asked.
A slow grin spread across her face. “When they introduced their children to their new biological siblings, who had different parents but would grow up right down the street.”
Now it was my turn to grin. “I love that line where she says something about how when she looks back on her life, that’s how she’ll always remember her children. Her son and daughter meeting these new baby twins, the awe of that moment, the serendipity of it all.”
Amelia looked at me for a long moment. I couldn’t quite read her expression.
“When I think of you,” she finally said, “it isn’t as a baby in a bassinet or as the annoying neighbor kid who squirted me with the water gun. I mean, I can think of you all those ways, of course, and I love that I can. But it’s that day when you were lying over me on the beach and the water was dripping off your chest onto me, and all of a sudden you were grown-up. And you said—”
“ ‘You’re okay, Amelia,’ ” I interjected softly. “ ‘I’m not going to let anything happen to you.’ ”
If only she knew how many times I had thought about that moment. I moved closer, my eyes on her eyes, testing the waters. I touched her cheek, dipping my toe into the shallow end. I was in that moment all over again, all those years ago, my face so close to hers, our breaths in time.
It’d be the simplest thing to lean into her, let my lips touch her lips. But I didn’t. Not now. Not yet.
“Hey, Lia?”
“Yeah?”
“Want to go to dinner with me?”
She smiled and nodded. I reached out my hand to her, and she took it. It was perfect. It was a start. And if anyone needed a fresh start, it was us.
Amelia
FALLING TOGETHER
PARKER AND I HAD THE best dinner ever. We had finally taken this spark between us out on the road, and it had been as electric as I had dreamed. I’d been charming, effervescent even. He had been as handsome and adorable and as sweet as any romantic hero. And then he walked me home, our fingers intertwined, his hand strong and steady and capable in mine, fitting there so nicely that I wondered why we hadn’t been doing this the entire time. And then we were standing close together inside the doorway of my apartment, and I knew what was going to happen next. My mind was racing with thoughts of us on the dock, the heat between us, the urgency.
Then he leaned over and kissed my cheek. Not my lips, not my neck, not any part of me where he wouldn’t have kissed his great-aunt Emily. And all that old self-doubt, all that insufficiency, started creeping in.
Parker had said he would never move on from Greer, and I should have believed him. He obviously hadn’t. Worse still, I could tell myself whatever I wanted to, but I hadn’t moved in with Harris because of Parker. I mean, sure, yes, I’d wanted to leave myself open to the possibility of love, but, come on. I had wanted to leave myself open to the possibility of Parker.
As he put his hand on the doorknob, I thought that I’d made a mistake. Maybe he just didn’t see me in that way. Maybe the kiss was a fluke. Well, this was humiliating. It was defeating. But I still had manners. “Parker,” I said. I was going to thank him for dinner, for making my night out so nice. He turned back to me and, before I could say, Thank you, before I could even think about it, his lips were on mine. I can’t say whether I kissed him or he kissed me, but I think it was more like a magnetic pull took over and we were together, the way we were meant to be.
His hands were in my hair, and our clothes were in a scattered trail from the front door to my bedroom. And I realized that I hadn’t stopped smiling for a single moment. Not one. The thoughts would flood in later, the concerns, the questions. But, for now, having Parker Thaysden as close to me as a man had ever been felt like coming home.
* * *
It must have been four a.m. that I woke up in a panic. And then I realized that the hand on me was Parker’s. And he was shirtless and beautiful in my bed. I kissed his chest, which was in close proximity to my face, savoring the manly smell of it and the real, unwaxed chest hair. I kissed his neck as I buried my head in, and then I sat straight up, realizing what the panic was for. I loved him. I was in love with Parker Thaysden. It wasn’t a fling or a crush or a one-night stand or, arguably, the best sex I had ever had. This was real. And I realized that my fear wasn’t the fear that I’d get attached and he’d leave me like with Thad or even Mason. No, I was afraid because I loved him so much I couldn’t bear to be without him—and he was never going to love me as much as he loved her. He was never going to be able to give his heart to me like I had given my heart to him. And I hadn’t even known I was doing it.