Mom rubs my back. “Let her go. She’ll realize her mistake soon enough.”
“The good ones always do,” Nonna agrees. “She’s a good one. I like her.”
“She didn’t—”
Fuck.
I duck and dodge and finally reach the hallway, but when I race to the parking garage, she’s gone from there too. So I leap into Fluffy Maple and crank her engine, and—nothing.
She doesn’t start.
My damn car won’t start.
I’m still in my cleats. I’m soaked with alcohol. I’m using my spare key that I hide under the wheel well because my wallet and driver’s license are back in the locker room, and the one woman who’s come to mean the entire world to me thinks I don’t love her because I can’t say the words, and if I can’t say the words, do I truly love her?
Do I?
Do I love her, or am I taking the chicken way out? Offering to keep her from getting hurt by anyone else, while making sure I won’t be either?
We fit.
We fucking fit, but I said the wrong two words, and now she’s gone, and not only is she gone, but I can’t get my damn car to start.
Why won’t my car start?
“You need a jump, Mr. Rossi?” The parking lot security guard jogs over. “Your lady tried, but—”
I whip my head up. “Henri tried to use my car?”
“Yes, sir. Flipped the hood open, tinkered a little…oh. Huh. Hm. You want me to check your battery cables, sir?”
I thunk my head against the wheel, but only once, because time’s wasting. “You know anything about distributor caps?”
His face lights up. “Sure do. You must’a pissed her off good if Miss Henri broke your car. She’s one of the good ones. Brought me a box of chocolates last week. Said everyone deserves a thank you.”
God.
That’s Henri.
She notices everyone.
I glance at the guy’s nametag, because I’ve never done that before, and why haven’t I? Why haven’t I?
My conscience answers that one for me.
Because you’re an asshole.
“Thanks, Phil.”
He nods. “No trouble.”
I can’t tip him, because I don’t have my wallet, but I make a mental note to send him a fruit basket.
Shit.
A fruit basket?
I need Henri.
I need my light, and I need my balance, and I need my Henri.
But when I get to my house, she’s gone.
She left a suitcase and her glittery coffee tumbler that spells out exactly what’s wrong and right with her—addicted to love stories—but she took her cat.
She’s gone.
I sink to the floor in my bedroom, and all I can see is Henri.
Henri tangled in my bedsheets. Henri pounding furiously at her laptop keys in the closet. Henri getting stuck under the bed trying to do “research.” Henri contemplating what the ceiling fan would say if it could talk, and then getting freaked out when it broke and had to be replaced a day later.
Henri sleeping.
Henri sitting up in bed and yawning with her short, crazy hair all over the place.
Henri talking to Dogzilla when she thought I wasn’t listening.
My bedroom is an empty shell without the one voice that used to annoy me and now I can’t imagine going a day without hearing.
I grab my phone to call her, except I don’t have it.
I don’t have my phone.
Jesus.
Fuck.
It’s at the ballpark with my wallet and keys.
I reach for it again to text one of the guys to bring it to me, but I can’t text without my fucking phone.
Jesus.
Jesus on a cannoli.
Where would she go?
Where would Henri go?
Where wouldn’t she go is a better question. The Henri I know is as likely to go sit at a diner and make new best friends with someone who will want to hear her life story as she is to head to the airport and decide that right now, she needs space, and that space will come in the form of heading to Europe for the weekend.
Or for the next seven months.
Or until she meets a yodeler in Switzerland whose lederhosen fit just the right way and she decides she’s in love.
Fuck.
I’ll find her.
I will.
I race back to my car, which starts fine this time, and I head to the usual spots. Her favorite diner. Her favorite ice cream shop. Her second favorite bakery, because it’s closer than her favorite bakery, which I also hit when every other place yields no Henri.
I cruise hotel parking lots. I check out parks.
And at three in the morning, I give up and head back home.
Max is waiting for me in my driveway. “Forgot a few things,” he says dryly, holding out my wallet and phone.
I lunge for the phone.
No calls from Henri. No texts. No emails.
I blink.
I have a computer.
I have a computer.
I could’ve video called her phone from my computer, and instead, I’ve been driving in circles in a giant-ass city, trying to guess which of the four hundred hotels or seven million food establishments she might be at.
“This gonna affect your game?” Max asks.
I scrub a hand over my face. “No.”
“You sure?”
“I’m a fucking professional and I can fucking compartmentalize, but it won’t be a problem, because I’m getting her back.”
I am.
I’ll get her back.
I’ll take back the proposal. And all the idiotic things that fell out of my mouth next as I was struggling with realizing that she was going to continue saying no, because marry me is the very, very worst thing I could’ve ever said to Henri, even if having Henri by my side for the rest of my life is the only thing I’ve ever wanted as much as I want baseball.
I fire her a quick text.
I’m so sorry. I know better. Call me. Please? I’ll make this up to you.
She doesn’t answer immediately.
The small message beneath the text doesn’t change from delivered to read either.
Shit. Shit.
Max pushes off his Mercedes SUV. “Look, Luca, you need to do whatever will make you happy, but all this shit your family’s putting you through? That’s not love, man. That’s not what anyone needs. You want neutral ground where no one’s giving you shit or trying to tell you how to live your life, you know where I live.”
“She’ll text me back. She’s probably—”
“I don’t know shit about love beyond what I see in movies, but even I know you don’t want your live engagement photos to happen when you look like your bride-to-be lost a bet over who could most look like they belong in a mental institution.”
“Shut your fucking mouth.” I’m slamming him against his car before my brain can process that he’s grinning.
It’s a dark grin, but it’s a grin. “Yeah. Thought so.”
“Screw you.”
“Not enjoying your pain, Luca. Making sure you’re good enough for her.”
I’m not, and we both know it. “I don’t want another dickhead hurting her by giving her dreams about forever when they don’t deserve a forever with her. Nobody does. She’s too—she’s too good for all of us.”
“Any woman who’ll send a teddy bear bouquet to a guy’s nuts after he gets racked by a line drive really is.”