Landon & Shay: Part Two (L&S Duet #2)(49)

I hated that I wanted to feel him inside me again. The other night in bed, I’d awakened hot and bothered, and I knew it was because Landon had slid into my dreams. I ended up pulling out my vibrator, and using it in the middle of the night, stupidly thinking about him as I got myself off. Afterward, I felt dirty, ashamed, and really good, too.

What was wrong with me?

I cleared my throat. “It was fine.”

Raine’s mouth dropped open. “That good, huh?”

I sighed, rubbing my hands over my face. “The best I’d ever had.”

“Gah, that’s insane. I always imagined what hate sex had to be like. Passionate, powerful, intense. I remember I tried to get Hank to be pissed at me once, just so we could experience hate sex, but he wasn’t having any part of it. He just loves to screw me while telling me how perfect I am. It’s really annoying.”

I smiled. “Yes, it must be awful being worshipped like a goddess,” I mocked.

“So annoying,” she joked. Then, she brought the topic back to Landon, of course. “Doesn’t he look good, though?”

“He looks like a troll.”

“Liar,” she said, rubbing her lower back with one hand as she reached for a box of Oreo’s cereal. Yes—Oreo’s had cereal, and recently Raine was going through a box once every three days. “He looks good. Healthy. Each time I see him, he looks better than the last. Like a fine wine.”

“Like a stupid two-thousand-and-ten bottle of Barolo Monfortino Riserva Conterno,” I grumbled. Raine arched an eyebrow at me. I shook my head. “Never mind.”

But it was true. Landon was made like a god.

“Well, lucky for you, you’re hot and amazing, so I’m sure he’s kicking himself in the ass for letting you slip away. You’re the one that got away for him,” she told me as we walked toward the check-out lane. “I just know it. Losing you is his biggest regret.”

“Has he ever said that to you?”

“He didn’t have to say it. I could see it in his eyes when he asked about you.”

I tried to push that thought away and not let it settle. That was when I saw the magazines. Landon’s face was plastered all over them with him posing with different women from the whiskey party a few days ago. He was smiling, and dancing, and taking shots. They called him the playboy of the century—stating how Landon was a serial dater who made Leonardo DiCaprio look like a down-to-earth family man. The pictures on the cover from the party showcased him with dozens of different women. It was as if he was living a freaking Mambo Number 5 song. He’d found Angelina, Pamela, Sandra, and Rita, and as he continued, the girls were getting prettier.

I picked up one of the magazines, and began flipping through it, a bit terrified I would’ve caught a photograph of me beside Landon, too. The more I flipped, the more my stomach dropped.

Nothing.

Not one photograph of me with Landon was captured, almost as if I’d never existed. That corner of my heart that still belonged to him? It felt foolish and ashamed that I had the nerve to even let Landon in for the small amount of time that we had.

All those freaking girls.

I wasn’t bitter about it at all.

Nope. Not even a little.

Okay. Fine. Just call me dark roast, baby, because bitterness was officially my first, middle, and last name.

Raine took notice of me eyeing the rest of the magazines. She moved in and turned them all backward in the stands. “These things are trash,” she muttered, making me smile. It was probably a sad looking smile, though.

“Super trash.”

“Are you okay, Shay?” she asked, frowning. It must’ve been clear that I was shaken up from seeing those magazines.

I nodded. “Yes, I’m fine. I’m just happy there wasn’t any photographic proof of my night with Landon. Now I can go on pretending it never happened.”

Unfortunately, I was simply one of the many women in Landon’s life who had been played—again.

When I got home that afternoon, I tried to keep myself busy, even though my mind was looking for a million reasons to think about Landon. I avoided social media for the past forty-eight hours to avoid seeing Landon’s face plastered all over the internet with photographs from the party.

Temptation was the devil. There were so many times in the past forty-eight hours that I wanted to type his name into a Google search, just to read the most recent articles about him.

But I wouldn’t, because that would be opening myself up for more pain and hurt.

I didn’t have time to hurt over that man, I did enough of that in my past.

I busied myself with writing. Creating fictional worlds was my favorite thing in the world to do when my reality felt too heavy. I loved writing love stories, because it took me away from the fact that I didn’t believe in true love anymore. At least in my stories, true love was a real thing. And in those stories? True love always won.





19





Landon





“I need a break, Joey. A sabbatical or something from all of this world,” I told my manager as I paced my penthouse. A few days had passed, and I was supposed to be back in New York, but I hadn’t made the jump to leave Chicago yet.

I’d been overthinking everything that went down with Shay, and I had to find a way to apologize to her for our last interaction. I wanted to talk to her to try to get on the same page, and to tell her how never in a million years did I want her to feel as if she were just another woman I was looking to bang. I saw it in her eyes the minute those two women walked up to us. I knew she thought she was nothing but a side piece.