Pizza My Heart(A Billionaire Romance, Part 2)(2)

If only I could escape the fact that Nana was no longer here.

“Are you all right?” Devon was looking at me, his brows drawn together.

“I’m fine.” It was the furthest thing from the truth.

He turned after a moment and led the way into the foliage, holding branches so I could pass by without getting scratched.

We walked for a long time, the only sounds the crunch of the ground beneath our feet, the birds winging from tree to tree overhead. It wasn’t a strenuous path, but I had to concentrate on not tripping over roots and rocks that crossed and dotted the trail. I welcomed it. This kind of focus eliminated all other thoughts, banished my grief through necessity. I didn’t know where we were going, where we would end up, but part of me wished we could walk for the rest of the day, the rest of our lives, even. After a while, all that mattered were my steps, my breathing, and the prickle of sweat across my body. It was an existence boiled down to just the basics of survival, and I found it much preferable than the existence I’d had earlier today, scattering Nana’s ashes at the beach, consumed with sadness.

Devon stopped and I ran into his back.

“This is it,” he said, both of us breathing hard. “Ready?”

I had no idea what he’d planned, or where he’d taken us to, but when I stepped around him, around the branches he was holding back for me, and saw a waterfall thundering down into a pool below, something inside of me broke open.

I cried like I hadn’t before, not at discovering Nana, lifeless on the beach she loved so much, not during all of the preparations and arrangements I’d muddled through, with Devon’s help, and not even this morning, when I’d let Nana go from that urn, leaving her there on the shore forever. I cried at the unexpected beauty of this moment, the way the spray left all the plants around here lush, green, and speckled with dew. I cried for the sole fact that things could still be beautiful without Nana in this world anymore.

Devon simply held the branches back so I could gaze upon this view and cry. It wasn't until I turned to him that he let the plants fall back into place, taking me into his arms, holding me until there were no tears left inside of me.

When I was done, he led me farther down until we were by the pool, our bodies cooling from our long hike thanks to the mist generated by the falls. The water was mesmerizing to watch.

“I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am, June,” he said after what could’ve been five minutes or five hours. It was so hard to gauge time here. “I feel that Nana’s passing…that’s my fault.”

I looked at him sharply, torn from my meditations on the falling water.

“That’s ridiculous,” I told him. “Why would you think that?”

He shrugged, looking out over the pool. “I was the one who wanted you both to come here. And you know that it was just an excuse to…try to impress you. If I hadn’t been such an asshole, you and Nana would still be in Dallas and she would be okay.”

There were a lot of things going on here. “Nana was never going to be okay,” I informed him. “Her health was worsening all the time, and for every medicine they prescribed her, I sometimes wondered if it was just prolonging her suffering.”

Sitting there beside the majesty of that waterfall, in the middle of the forest, I had a revelation that made Nana’s death not cut so deeply.

“She chose this,” I said. “She was the one who picked a time and a place. She went out on her own terms. She chose the way she wanted to die, at a location that made sense to her. And I guess if we feel anything, it should be admiration. Jealousy, maybe. We don’t all get to pick how we die.”

Devon studied me, those brown eyes shimmering with an emotion I couldn’t put a name to.

But I wasn’t done yet. That was the pleasant part of my revelation. Devon wasn’t off the hook.

“But now that you’ve gotten what you wanted, I should probably go,” I said, eyeing him.

He wrinkled his nose. “What are you talking about? Go where? Back to the cottage?”

“No. I mean I should go back to Dallas. Leave you to it.”

Devon was silent for a while, his nose wrinkled in confusion, trying to figure me out.

“You’re going to have to explain,” he said finally. “I don’t understand what you’re getting at.”

“On the plane,” I sighed. “And right now. You said the only reason you invited me…us…here was to impress me. That you wanted to have sex with me. And now that it’s happened, I figured you’d want to move on to other pursuits. You’re a busy and famous man, and I know I was a just a novelty to you. A curiosity.”