Landon & Shay: Part Two (L&S Duet #2)(32)

He spent his birthday on a yacht with dozens of supermodels. If that wasn’t a blow to my ego, I wasn’t certain what was. For a little while, those birthdays had been mine. His hands had rested against mine.

He had been mine.

If only for a small moment in time.

Along with watching him succeed from a distance, I also watched how his relationships spread like wildfire. Landon was a serial dater who made Leonardo DiCaprio look like a down-to-earth family man. I was somewhat surprised he hadn’t found his way back to me, because he pretty much found his way to every other single woman on the planet.

I mean, honestly—how could he go on and find himself and forget about ever, oh, I don’t know, thanking the one girl who pushed him to do exactly that? How could he move on so quickly with movie stars like Sarah Sims, and not even offer an apology? How could he go and never look back?

If not for me, he never would’ve been interested in acting in the first place. If not for me, he never would’ve known what a script looked like. I opened those doors for him, and he walked right in without looking back at me for a split second.

While he was off living in la-la land, I was receiving rejection letters left and right, struggling to figure out a way to make my dreams come true. Then there was sweet ol’ Landon, eating steak with the Rock, probably even calling him Dwayne like they had an actual friendship, while I was trying to figure out how to not eat ramen noodles three times a week.

Life wasn’t fair.

He was living the dream I’d set out to achieve, sleeping around with EGOT winners, and I was struggling to pay back my student loans for a creative arts degree I never used.

Each time he appeared on television, social media, or during the previews at the movie theater, a part of my soul burned with pure rage. I went back to basics with my feelings toward Landon, back to the days before our stupid high school bet ever took root, back to him being Satan, nothing more and nothing less.

I once told a few coworkers at the coffee shop I worked at that Landon and I used to date, and they laughed straight in my face.

“Sure, and I dated Rihanna.” My manager Brady chuckled. “Oh, Shay. You and your humor.”

I never brought it—or him—up again. I’d spent my early years being a complete idiot, thinking there was a chance Landon was going to come back to me. I refused to do the same with my thirties.

My teen years and twenties had been a time for stupid love mistakes.

The rest of my life would be spent discovering self-love.

In the past, I believed in fairytales. I believed in true love conquering all, but now I was old enough to know better. The only love story that mattered was the one I lived with myself. If I was in love with me, it didn’t matter if some man was, too. My love had to be enough to keep me warm at night. So, I started to fall in love again—with me, with my life, with my dreams.

I told myself day in and day out that I’d be ready if the time ever came for Landon and me to cross paths again, but I knew it was impossible to be prepared for such a day. Not after what we’d shared. Not after what we were. Our time together was a single leaf floating away in the breeze with no sense of direction or destination, but our love was real even if it only existed for moments. First loves were different. You never saw the flames coming before it was too late, and you were left scorched.

I didn’t believe you ever fell out of your first love. You simply allowed it to live in a small corner of your heart, taking up prime real estate of your soul.

I knew after loving Landon, I wouldn’t be able to ever fully give my love away again. My heart froze over after he left me.

It would’ve taken a miracle for it to someday defrost, and I was no longer in the realm of believing in miracles.





12





Landon

Thirty-Two years old





“You better wrap up whatever you’re writing, because we’re about to pull up to the building,” Willow said, glancing my way before returning her stare back to her cell phone.

I looked down to my notebook, and grimaced. The words weren’t flowing too easily that afternoon.

Every single day, I wrote one single letter.

Hundreds of words jotted down on lined paper. Different ink colors, different strokes, different ways of expressing the love.

Some of them were short while others went on for pages and pages. I shared parts of me in the ruled notebooks, bleeding every feeling I’d ever felt through the ink of the pen. I’d been writing letters for a few years now. I never thought I’d be the type to write love letters to individuals, but it was something that became a staple of my life.

Each letter dripped in truth, something that was very lacking in my day-to-day life. It was no secret that if not for Shay Gable, I never would’ve picked up a pen to express myself.

Now, it came to me as naturally as showering and brushing my teeth.

I’d never known words could heal until I picked up a pen and bled them out.

“Are you ready?” Willow asked, glancing my way for a split second before looking down at her cell phone and typing away, probably dealing with the disaster that was my inbox. Willow had been my assistant for the past few years, and without her skills, I never would’ve made it to an audition, screening, or interview appointment. All in all, she ran my life from top to bottom.

We were sitting in a black SUV outside The Tonight Show, and I was trying my best to prepare myself for the mayhem when I opened the door and climbed out of the vehicle. I’d been doing this fame thing for over ten years now, and still, I wasn’t used to it. I wasn’t used to walking down the street and hearing people scream my name. I wasn’t used to having people wait for me to arrive at venues just for a chance to get a glimpse of me. I wasn’t used to people caring about my existence.