Landon & Shay: Part Two (L&S Duet #2)(48)

“Shay—”

Before he could finish, two supermodel women walked over to us and were smiling ear to ear with their pearly whites and long, tan legs in shoes that were probably too expensive for me to even look at.

“Landon, hey! It’s been so long. We should go grab a drink at the bar,” one of the women said.

“Yeah, and then maybe we can find an after party to crash,” the other replied, twirling her hair around her finger, looking at Landon as if she was going to eat him all up.

He’d already had his next two courses laid out in front of him. Dinner and dessert. I was simply the appetizer, unworthy of being his main course meal.

I was going to vomit.

They stepped in front of me as if I were invisible, and that was exactly what I began to feel.

Invisible.

I felt so insanely invisible.

“Sorry, ladies, right now isn’t a good time. I was actually having a conversation with—”

“No one,” I cut in. I gave the two women a smile, and they eyed me up and down with dismissal looks. “He’s all yours, ladies.”

I walked off, feeling as if I’d just been slammed into a wall with a semi-truck. My body ached not only from the soreness of how Landon rocked my body, but also from the pain of how he rocked my soul.

He wasn’t supposed to be able to do that anymore. I’d spent the past years trying to delete every part of him from my entire being. But it turned out first loves were unable to fully erase from a person’s psyche. A part of Landon would always live in my heart. From his kiss alone, he unlocked that corner of my heartbeats, and then proceeded to break it all over again.

I stopped drinking for the remainder of the night, and, regrettably, Landon stayed on my mind.





18





Shay





The worst part of sleeping with your ex-boyfriend who was a celebrity? You couldn’t just wallow in self-pity for your bad mistake. You were forced to see him everywhere you went. On billboards, in movie trailers, in the check-out line at the grocery store. The check-out line was the worst place to see him, too. Because on those magazine covers, Landon was never alone. There was always some drop-dead model or actress attached to his arm. He always looked dapper as ever, smiling ear to ear.

“Wait, so you slept with him?” Raine asked, completely baffled by the story I’d just told her about my interaction with Landon as I pushed the grocery cart through the store. Raine rubbed her hands over her ever-growing stomach and stared wide-eyed at the reveal of my time at the whiskey party.

I’d been helping her go grocery shopping for the past few weeks, seeing how she was eight months pregnant, and ready to pop any day. She couldn’t reach the lower shelves, and struggled to pick up some items, so I went along. Hank traveled a lot for work, so he hadn’t been around the past few weeks. Hank told her that they could have the groceries delivered, but Raine was against that idea. “I refuse to be bedridden and get fat. I need to get out. But Shay, come with me so you can get the pickle jars for me.”

“Yes. I accidentally had sex with him.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Accidentally? How is that even a thing? Did you accidentally take off your underwear and accidentally sit on his penis?”

“He actually ripped my underwear off.” I frowned. “They were my favorite pair, too.”

“If I were you, I’d bill him for the pair. And overcharge him, too. He has the money to cover it. But really, Shay. How?”

“Well, he bombarded me and began going on and on about things of the past. And I don’t know, I just snapped. I went off telling him how I hated him and shoved him repeatedly as I felt so much rage in my chest, and the next thing I knew, I was kissing him aggressively and taking off his clothes.”

“Ohh,” she breathed out. “Hate sex. That’s hot.”

“That’s not hot. It was so humiliating afterward. The security guard outside went to high-five Landon, as if it was something he did on the normal. I felt ridiculous.”

“Well, you shouldn’t. Plus, I know how those women come on to Landon. They probably cornered him.”

“When did you get on his side?” I asked, somewhat still hurting from the events of the whiskey party.

She held her hands up. “Nope. Switzerland here. I’m just saying, I’ve watched how those models attacked him throughout the years.”

“Oh yes. Poor Landon, the man who has supermodels hammering all over him. Boo-freaking-hoo.”

“I’m sorry, Shay. I know it’s not easy. Even though you two happened so long ago, it doesn’t change the fact that what you had was real. I really thought the two of you were destined for forever.”

I hated that I believed that, too. That Landon was my endgame. My happily ever after. My forever.

What a stupid girl I had been back then.

“It’s okay,” I lied. “I’m okay.”

I’m fiiine.

“Not to be nosy, but I’m going to be nosy…how was it?”

“The sex?” I asked, thinking back to the wild exchange. I still received chills thinking about the way Landon owned my body in that room a few nights ago. The way his kisses tasted like sin and burned more than the whiskey. The way he slid in and out of me, thrusting his hardness against my core, fucking me as if he’d been waiting to show me how much I’d been on his mind all those years we’d missed. He fucked me as if apologizing for the scars he left me with. Just recalling the night was almost enough to get me hot and bothered all over again. It was the best sex that I’d ever had, and I hated that fact. I hated that I’d never been so turned on in my life. I hated that he took me to new heights that I didn’t even know sex could travel to. I hated how much I loved the way he made me feel.