Landon & Shay: Part Two (L&S Duet #2)(38)

I spoke the only word I could muster as I wiped the raindrops from my face. “No.”





No.

No, no, no, no.

That was the only word I’d managed to say to Landon as he sat there on the outside steps of the entryway to my apartment.

My heart sat in my chest after the very short-lived interaction. My mind was still spinning from the idea that he’d been sitting on those steps in the pouring rain. How long had he sat there waiting before I had arrived, and why did I feel like my sweet, sweet friend Raine had something to do with him learning where I lived?

Shay: You are officially on my shit list.

Raine: I was waiting for this text message to come through, but you can’t blame it on me. I’m hormonal and eight months pregnant. When Landon asked about you, I couldn’t control my tongue.

Not shocking. Raine had never been able to control her tongue. Ever since we were kids, she’d been sticking her nose in other people’s business. One of her most used phrases was, “I don’t want to get involved, but—”

I knew her and her husband, Hank, had kept in touch with Landon throughout the years. It wasn’t an unknown secret that he kept just about all of his friendships except me. But, Raine hardly ever brought him up because she knew how hard it was for me to hear about Landon.

I supposed she didn’t think it would be a big deal to, oh I don’t know, give him my address so he could stalk me a little bit on a rainy Sunday.

Raine: Forgive me, please.

Raine: If it makes it any better, you should know that I peed myself in line at Target today after I bent over to pick up a Snickers bar. That’s right. I pissed myself in the checkout line of Target, and then I broke down into tears, causing even more of a scene. Have pity on your awful friend.

I smiled at the text message. Oddly enough that did make me feel a little better.

Raine: Let me make it up to you—Brunch this Sunday, on me. Endless mimosas for you, and I’ll just have to sit and watch you drink my favorite drink in the world. I’ll allow you to get shitfaced as I try not to wet myself in another public place.

Shay: Deal.

I hurried into my bedroom and began running a bath, one I was planning on staying in until the water ran cold and my fingers turned into prunes.

My phone dinged once more.

Raine: But he looked good, right? I thought he looked so good. Healthy. Happy. Sexy as all get out.

Shay: I’m deleting your number until Sunday, and I fully expect you to name your child after me after this incident.

Raine: But I’m having a boy.

Shay: Right. Make him suffer the way you’ve made me suffer.

I climbed into the steaming hot pool of water with a bottle of red wine, because when your celebrity ex-boyfriend showed up to your door after a decade of silence, one had no need for a wineglass. Straight from the bottle it was, like the classy lady I’d grown up to become.

After a few very large chugs from the bottle, I sat it down on the tiled bathroom floor. I leaned back in the tub and tried my best to shake the thought of Landon away, but it seemed almost impossible to do so.

Because Raine wasn’t wrong—Landon did look good. Too good. Sure, in the moment he hadn’t looked like the happiest guy in the world sitting in the rain, but he had looked healthy. Sigh. And handsome. He looked so painfully handsome standing there dripping wet with me on his mind.

What I hated most about him was how he aged so well, like the finest of wines. I’d wished he would go from a swan to an ugly duckling over time, but, alas, Landon was beautiful. I hadn’t known men could be beautiful until I watched him grow up from a young preteen with acne to the striking adult he’d become. He became so damn handsome it was nauseating. Once when Eleanor and I were wine drunk and watching Hallmark Christmas movies in July, we looked up the most expensive bottles of wine in the world, and dammit if Landon wasn’t a 2010 Barolo Monfortino Riserva Conterno.

I was truly hoping he’d become a $2.99 gas station bottle of Moscato.

It wasn’t one characteristic that made him beautiful, either. It was every single thing. He had so many well-defined facial features, from his bright blue eyes, to the carved-out dimples in his cheeks, his chiseled jawline, and his lips.

Oh, those full, kissable lips.

I began recalling the number of times those lips had been all over my body, how many times they’d tasted me, explored me, owned me in every single way. How those lips and that man had taken the two things from me that I could’ve never given to another man—my virginity and my heart.

Plus, his body was well built, too. My gosh, his body was ripped—probably a big thanks to the action movie he’d finished filming a few months back. I hadn’t seen the movie. I hadn’t watched any of his movies since we’d gone our separate ways, but you couldn’t be on social media without seeing Landon and his nineteen million abs from that movie. His abs broke the internet more than Kim Kardashian’s champagne ass toast.

Landon’s skin glowed, too, even when it was dripping from the rain. When we were kids, the sun used to attack him and turn him into a ripe tomato, but nowadays, Landon seemed more sun-kissed than burned. He had a coppery tone to him that probably made millions of women go mad.

And out of the millions of women in the world pining after him, he still ended up on my doorstep.

Don’t read too much into it, Shay.