“So what? I’m just supposed to fly there and show up at the wedding? Twiddle my thumbs while acting confidently, and then that’s all it will take? The tide will turn?”
“No.”
“No? Ah yes, I forgot. In order to appear self-assured, I apparently need to have a big, powerful, strapping man at my side because that’s the only way a woman can be confident, right?” Bitterness.
Can’t say I blame her.
“Not in my eyes, but in theirs? Possibly.” My comment settles between us. She rolls her shoulders. Her only physical tell of how pissed she is over this.
“So what? I’m just supposed to say, ‘Hey Hayes, wanna ditch your filming schedule and glamorous life and go on a ridiculous trip with me to my wedding that’s no longer my wedding?’” I hate the part of me that loves I’m the one she thinks of when she needs a man to accompany her. “Like you’d really fly to some island with me, so we can show my ex-fiancé and his family and uptight friends that I’m better off without him, because I’m “fake” dating you instead. A man who is so much bigger and better and more successful and handsome than he is? Like that’s going to happen.”
“Why wouldn’t it?” That stops her rant. Knocks the sarcasm from her last sentence.
Her head whips up and her eyes meet mine. Hand stops halfway to her hair as a disbelieving laugh falls from her mouth. “You’d actually go?”
I shrug. “Yeah. Why not? I could use a little R&R with someone I know and who doesn’t expect anything from me.” Something flashes in her eyes that I can’t read. “Besides, now that I remember him, Mitch always was an asshole in high school, I’d get some sick satisfaction from showing that fucker what he was missing out on by not being with you.”
“The irony,” she whispers and the two words hit me in the gut. The pang of regret not far behind it.
“Saylor—”
“No. Never mind. That was a cheap shot.” She says the words but the truth of them linger in her eyes. She reaches out and puts her hand on top of mine. “Thank you. The offer is sweet. The intent behind it even more so. But even if I wanted to, I’d never be able to pull it off.”
“Did you forget what I do for a living?” My laugh rings louder than it should. The Oscar on my shelf at home flashes in my mind as my need to convince her suddenly grows stronger than when Ryder first called. Greater than when I saw her earlier tonight. “I assure you we could pull it off.”
“We should leave.” She shifts to her knees suddenly and moves toward the door. I hate the hurt in her tone. Hate knowing that the fucker Mitch isn’t the only one who put it there.
I did, too.
“Saylor.”
“No. I’m tired. I need to get home.”
“Okay. Let me go down first in case you need help.”
She levels me with a glare for implying she can’t do it herself but I move past her, bodies brushing against one another, and take the lead anyway.
My feet are through the doorway when I look back at her. “For what it’s worth, Say, I think you should go. And I’d drop whatever to be there for you. It’s the least I could do.”
She doesn’t say a word to me, just nods as I lower myself out of her sight and down the rungs.
I’m on the ground in a few seconds, a very quiet Saylor not far behind me as I wait at the bottom. When she’s on the second step from the ground, her heel slips. Just as I step forward and reach out to her hips to help her, she spins around.
Our bodies are pressed against each other with her hands flat against my chest. Her expression is startled, but her eyes remain on mine. Her breath an audible hitch.
And fuck if standing like this with her doesn’t make me want to lean in and kiss her. It all comes back: her taste, that little sound she used to make in the back of her throat, the scar on the back of her head from falling off the brick wall that I’d feel when grabbing the back of it to direct the angle of our kiss. All of it.
And it’s a temptation like I haven’t felt in forever.
“Hayes.”
“Yeah?” My gaze flickers from hers down to her lips and then back up. I want to know what her eyes are telling me.
“Nothing. Never mind.” She shakes her head and steps back.
I clench my jaw. Fist my hands. Tell myself to let her walk away. To not notice the freckles on her nose are still there. The ones I used to tease her about as a kid, then later, loved staring at when she fell asleep in the bed of my truck at the drive-in when we were teenagers.
The thought triggers so many more things I used to love about her. Reminds me how close we were. How many parts of our lives were woven so tightly it was like we were one.