Landon & Shay: Part Two (L&S Duet #2)(39)

Geez. How could I not? I was on his mind so much that he tracked me down in search of…what? I still wasn’t sure what he had been looking for when he came to my door that night. A reunion? A flash of emotion pouring out of one another? Me telling him I’d never stopped loving him after all this time?

I didn’t give him any of what he’d wanted—not my time or my attention. I gave him nothing, because nothing was what he deserved. I was no longer the girl who waited around for guys to make time for me to fit into their lives.

I was too old for games outside of Sudoku, and I refused to allow Landon Harrison to play me again.





14





Shay





I waited until the morning of the whiskey launch party to build up enough nerve to ask Sam to come with me. The past few nights, I’d been a bit of a recluse, working on my manuscripts. Sam always said he understood when I went into artist mode and stayed in my writing cave. Truth was, the writing cave was an excuse for me to skip out on reality for a short period of time.

Landon kept crossing my mind like a bad habit. I felt intoxicated by the memory of him standing in the pouring rain on those steps. I couldn’t shake it away, no matter how hard I tried, and I really, really tried.

I still wasn’t one hundred percent certain about asking Sam to attend the party with me, but I figured it was the right thing to do, especially knowing Landon and I would be face to face within a few hours.

I’d have been lying if I’d said listening to Mima go on and on about Sam not being right for me didn’t bother me a bit. What bothered me even more was how I felt more from those few minutes near Landon, than I had in the past nine months with Sam. There was a small hiccup in my throat where those nerves built up, but I tried my best to shake them away.

We were fine, Sam and I, because there wasn’t really any room for drama. That was another problem with passionate romances—the drama it entailed. Just standing near Landon for those few minutes had struck up fireworks inside my soul, and they burned so intensely. He came in scorching hot, leaving me with blisters.

Sam and I weren’t like that. We were easy. What was so wrong with being easy? He’d never end up standing in front of my house in the pouring rain, and that was fine.

Sam wasn’t the bad boy. He was a gentleman. He took me on dates, opened doors, pulled out chairs, and when he texted me, he used complete sentences.

For the first time in years, loneliness caught up to me and I gave Sam a chance.

I needed a good boy, and he seemed to fit that mode for me.

He was basic in all the right ways. There were no real surprises when it came to Sam, and I was thankful for that. He’d never done drugs. He was a casual drinker. He loved his mother and called his grandma every weekend. He had a healthy love for animals, and he’d taken part in the women’s march the previous fall.

Sure, he had his nerdy quirks, but I liked that about him. I liked how he could talk about Star Trek with such a gleam in his eyes. I liked our date nights at gaming bars. Even though I wasn’t a gamer by any means, watching him get excited was enough to make my cold heart slowly beat.

Honestly, he seemed one hundred percent top notch…right up until I walked in on him banging Princess Leia early that morning.

Well, not the actual Princess Leia, seeing how she was a fictional character. Plus, Sam didn’t really have the kind of skills needed to nail an actual princess. The girl he was currently humping and grinding wore a cosplay outfit, and I swore she screamed out, “Sam, you are my daddy,” in some kind of nerdy, high-pitched, orgasmic screech.

Sam. You. Are. My. Daddy.

Oh for fuck’s sake.

“Are you kidding me?” I blurted out, standing in Sam’s bedroom while a woman’s clit sat against his mouth. The way he maneuvered his face to glance toward me made acid rise up my throat, leaving me seconds away from vomiting. He was face-deep in another girl’s vagina and he had the nerve to give me guilty puppy dog eyes.

Puppy dog eyes and glistening lips.

My stomach clenched from the sight of it all. For a split second I considered how I’d look in an orange jumpsuit. Truthfully, orange wasn’t my color. Was it anyone’s color? I couldn’t for the life of me think of the last time I’d said, Oh, Heather! You’re really rocking that orange top, girl!

How many years would I spend in prison for the murder of two human beings?

Would the judge be more forgiving if I told him the Princess Leia story?

The woman’s eyes locked with mine, and I took a few steps backward when realization set in that it was Tina—the woman who came into Ava’s Bakery and Coffee Shop every single day.

I served her coffee every morning, and we laughed and joked about life together. She was adorkable in so many ways. If Sam were a female, he’d be Tina. She was so effortlessly charming as she spoke about nerdy stuff I didn’t understand. When she talked, I could tell she was passionate about it, and there was nothing I loved more than finding people who were passionate about things as opposed to being passionate about people.

When she’d mentioned she ran a Dungeon and Dragons game night every week, I informed her that my boyfriend—correction: ex-boyfriend—had been looking to join a group activity of that sort. I almost begged her to let Sam join her group, only because I was getting sick of him trying to explain to me that Dungeon and Dragons had nothing to do with whips and red rooms.