I’ll always love her, I’ll always think of her, and hopefully one day, she’ll find room in her heart to love me again.
Theo
When I heard the door open, I sat up on the couch and closed the book I was reading. She came in with an assortment of bags and kicked off her heels.
“And here I thought you didn’t go shopping?” I smiled, getting up and going to her.
“You’re up.” She smiled at me as if seeing me for the first time in weeks. “I got food!”
“All of this is food?” I asked, taking a few bags from her.
“Yep. I was originally going to get just soup, but I got hungry, and each place Nolan took me to was better than the last.”
Proving her point, she pulled out pimento cheese sandwiches, damson plum jam, butter biscuits, clam chowder, something called muscadines, which looked like blackberries, and scuppernongs, which looked like fat grapes. Adding to her haul were two bottles of wine and finally the soup she’d mentioned.
“Do you have enough food, Felicity?” I tried a muscadine; they were really sweet.
“I haven’t eaten all day and besides, I figured this would be better than me trying and failing to make something again,” she replied as she grabbed the wine bottle and looked for a corkscrew in the kitchen drawers.
“I heard you became my personal assistant today?”
She froze and slowly turned to me. “Who told you?”
“Doesn’t matter.” Skirting the kitchen island, I took her hand, bringing her closer to me. “Thank you for your help today.”
“It was really—”
Kissing her was stiff for a second, the first ever since I had met her. It was only when I cupped her ass that she finally relaxed into me and wrapped her arms around my neck. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
She forced a smile, which was a shallow imitation of the one she’d had before. “After this week we should… I’m going to stop this. I just want you to know.”
Nodding, I moved back to the food while she searched for the corkscrew. I was annoyed, but it didn’t last long. The moment I saw the photo of us sticking out from her copy of the script, I slid it to me before turning to glance back at her.
“Honestly, where is that thing?” she muttered to herself, kneeling to reach a lower drawer.
Burying the picture into the script, I went to help her.
“We should have taken a picture while we were in costume yesterday, don’t you think?” I opened the dishwasher and pulled out the corkscrew. Taking the wine bottle from her hands, I opened it.
“Oh well. Besides, we don’t need photos anyway,” she lied as she grasped the script and tucked it into her bag.
I fought the urge to smile. She was trying so damn hard to push me away even when she didn’t want to.
“True. One more week, and we’re done,” I lied and poured her a glass.
I had five more days to make her realize she didn’t really want this to end and neither did I.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Sweet, Sweeter, Sinful
Felicity
Day 3
5:56 a.m.
My legs were on fire.
“Theo, where the hell are we going?” I gasped as I walked up the trail behind him. Taking the bottle of water out of my backpack, I drank deeply.
He had woken me up a little over an hour ago, saying he had to show me something. Grumpily, I agreed, and when I got of bed, he’d already laid out hiking clothes for me, along with some shoes.
“Were almost there,” he said, stopping beside me as I took another break. “Or at least we would be if you didn’t stop every few feet.”
“You just had the flu. Shouldn’t you be resting in bed? In fact, we could both be in bed right now and not in the middle of the woods.”
“It’s technically a forest.” He laughed, and I glared at him. “And fresh air is good for the body.”
“Whatever is up this hill better blow my mind,” I muttered, moving past him as if I knew where we were going. “Oh shit!”
“What?”
I jumped behind him, allowing him to see the fucking big-ass snake that had just crawled in front of me. “Kill it!”
“How about if I just move it out of the way?” He reached for a branch, but I took his hand.
“What if it’s poisonous? I like you, Theo, I really do, but there is no way in hell I’m sucking venom out of you.”
He laughed. “Felicity, it’s not poisonous.”
Taking the branch, he lifted it easily and moved it to the side of the road while I checked to see if any of its family was nearby.
“Another new thing I’ve learned about you. You’re afraid of snakes.”
“As everyone should be. I’m worried about the people who aren’t.” I shivered in disgust just thinking about it.