I flushed slightly at that comment. “Nice to meet you, ma’am.”
“Ma’am,” Apple said, glancing at Nora. “I like this one.”
Nora grinned. “Me too.”
“Ah, young love,” she mused, taking the cactus out of my arm.
I sputtered at that word. Love. Nora met my eyes, and then we both quickly looked away. We hadn’t said that word. I mean…I was leaving. I was going back to LA. That word would only ruin everything we had right now. It didn’t matter how I felt. Not truly. Because even if nothing worked out with Campbell and Cosmere, then I was still going to take the producing job.
“Apple,” Nora admonished, “we’re just roommates.”
“Bah!” she said. “You young people and your labels. Back in my day, if you looked at each other the way that you two do, you’d be past dating and halfway to engaged.”
Nora laughed. “That’s not really how it’s done anymore.”
“So I’ve heard. It sounds exhausting and complicated.”
Couldn’t fault her there. It was complicated.
Before Nora could say anything else, her phone started to ring. She looked down at it with alarm. “Uh, excuse me for a minute.”
She took a few steps away, but I didn’t miss the name she uttered incredulously. “Tamara?”
“She’s special, you know?” Apple said as she handed me the receipt for my new cactus.
“I do know.”
Apple arched an eyebrow. “Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Because it looks like you’re going to let the best thing to happen to you slip through your fingers like the last idiot who hurt her.”
I gaped at her. “I promise you, ma’am, I have no intention of hurting her.”
She guffawed at me. “No one intends to hurt someone. They just do it.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. Guilt settled into the pit of my stomach. I had something special here, but I had something special in LA, too. I didn’t see a way that I could possibly have both.
“You let that girl know how you feel before it’s too late,” Apple added.
I gulped and nodded. Before it was too late. When was that? Fuck.
Nora’s voice rose. “I don’t have to listen to this!”
Then, she hung up and strode back toward me like a thundercloud. “Let’s go.”
“What happened?”
She shook her head and controlled her expression enough to give Apple a hug and tell her good-bye. By the time we got back to her truck, she had clouded over again.
“Nora,” I said, grabbing her arm. “Talk to me.”
She sighed heavily, deflating like a balloon. “August broke off the engagement.”
I froze at those words. The careful delivery, as if she had no emotions about them. But I could hear how brittle she’d sounded underneath it. I hadn’t heard that from her in so long. I hated the way it had come out.
I wanted to punch August so bad right now. He’d better not fucking think this was his way back in because that wasn’t fucking happening.
“Really?”
“Yes, Tamara called to congratulate me.”
“Whatever for?”
I held my breath, feeling like I’d created a prophecy and it was about to come true.
She met my gaze with a look, like she was drowning. “Because apparently, he told her he still loved me.”
24
Nora
August still loved me.
Ice snapped under my feet, dragging me beneath a freezing pond. I felt chilled to the bone at those words.
All that work I’d done to get over him. All that time I’d wanted nothing more than to not feel like this anymore. Everything I’d been through because of him. And now—now—he claimed to still love me?
“And…how do you feel about that?” West asked carefully.
So carefully. Too carefully.
I wanted to reassure him. I wanted to tell him that I felt nothing about it. But it would be a lie. I’d thought I’d moved on completely, but first love stuck with you. I knew what August and I had was never ever going to be the same. How could I forgive him for what he’d done? Saying he was in love with me didn’t flip a switch.
I shook my head and looked away. “I don’t know.”
“Nora…”
He reached for me, and I let him drag me against him. Tears came to my eyes, unbidden. I hated it. I hated them. I’d told myself I was done crying over August. I was so far past done.
“It’s okay,” West said. “It must be confusing.”
“I wanted him to love me, to choose me for so long, West.”
His body tensed at those words. How hard it must be for him to comfort me when I was upset about another man. But still, he said, “It’s okay. Your feelings are real.”
“No,” I said, pulling back and swiping at my tears. “That’s not what I mean. I don’t still love him. I just…I loved him for so long. But he didn’t choose me. He didn’t love me when I needed him to.”
“No, he didn’t,” West agreed.
I straightened and hardened, as if I were shoring up all the cracks in my foundation. “He doesn’t get to choose to miraculously love me again. That’s not how it works. He cheated on me. He proposed to someone else.”
“And then he saw us together at the soccer game.”
My face lit up with recognition. “You don’t think…”
“That he was jealous? Yeah, I do,” West said confidently.
“He wouldn’t break off his engagement because he saw us kissing.”
“Looks like he just did.”
My head swam. That was absurd. All this time, he’d wanted to have his cake and eat it too. He wanted me to pine after him. The way I always returned his feverish texts and met him in the park and played his little game. But when I stopped playing, he decided he wanted me back? It was too coincidental not to be true, and somehow, I found it unfathomable.
He could have had me whenever he wanted me for almost an entire year after I caught him cheating. Now, when he couldn’t have me, he wanted me?
“That’s terrible. I almost feel bad for Tamara.”
West snorted. “Don’t. She went into all of this willingly.”
“I guess she did.”
In fact, I’d always suspected that Tamara had been the aggressor. She’d had little remorse through so much of it. She shoved it in my face that they were engaged. She’d won. But still, it couldn’t have felt good to hear that. August had hurt us both.
“I just…fuck, I don’t know.” I ran a hand back through my hair. “I feel like I want to run away.”
“Then, let’s run away.”
I looked up at him warily. “What do you mean?”
“I mean exactly what I said. You need to get out of Lubbock. I’m going crazy, pacing and waiting for Campbell to get back. Let’s go do something. What’s something you’ve always wanted to do?”
I shrugged. “Paris.”
He laughed. “Okay, maybe something a little closer?”