Park Avenue Player(76)

But then I decided against it. Hollis might be here to let me down gently. The least I could do after being jerked around for so long was make him eat his heart out a little. I didn’t even bother to put on panties.

He was staring out the window when I returned to the living room. He seemed lost in thought.

“So, what’s going on? Did you come from the city? You must’ve hit a lot of traffic at this time?”

He turned to face me. “I drove out this morning, actually.”

My brows drew together. “Did you have a meeting or something?”

He shoved his hands into his pockets and looked down as he shook his head. “I wasn’t sure what time you’d be home. I drove out right after Hailey called this morning.”

“You were parked outside when I pulled up?”

“No. I went into town to grab something to eat. You must’ve come home while I was gone.”

“But it’s almost six o’clock. You sat outside all day?”

He nodded.

“Why didn’t you call?”

“I didn’t want to interrupt your time with your friend. I didn’t know when you’d be leaving.”

It was a little crazy to drive all this way to park in front of my house and wait, but his reason for not calling was also thoughtful and sweet. Hollis had so many rough edges, yet every once in a while he showed a soft side. And that soft—however rare—eclipsed all of the hard.

I sat down on the couch. “Thank you. But you could have called or texted.”

Hollis took a seat on the couch, a few feet away from me. “How was your weekend? How is your friend?”

I sighed. “She wanted to talk about her final wishes and arrangements and stuff.”

He nodded. “That must’ve been tough.”

“It was. And she did it for us. She wanted to make sure we knew what she wanted, not for her sake, but so it relieved us of any difficult decisions we might have to make. In fact, the entire weekend was really to make sure we were going to be okay after…” I trailed off, unable to bring myself to say the words.

Hollis scooted closer on the couch and took my hand. “I’m sorry.”

I swallowed and nodded. “Anyway, I don’t think I can handle rehashing the weekend, so I’d prefer to change the subject. Why don’t we talk about what you came here for? What’s going on?”

He moved in closer. “I came here for you.”

Maybe it was a self-protective mechanism, but instinctively, I moved back. “For me?”

“If you were anywhere else but with your friend who needed you this weekend, I would have driven to you—never mind driven, fucking walked if I had to.”

He ran his hands through his hair, making a beautiful, tousled mess. He seemed uncharacteristically nervous. “I’ve counted every minute you’ve been gone. Holding this in has been difficult.”

My heart rate sped up. “Holding what in?”

“I wanted to say this before you told me about going to the lake with Bree. You’ll remember I came home from work that night wanting to talk. But then you told me you were going away, and I realized that given the situation, this needed to wait. You had to focus on her. But I can’t wait anymore, which is why I came up here.”

I crossed my arms. “What is it?”

“I’m done fucking things up, Elodie.” Hollis looked up at the ceiling and paused, as if to gather his thoughts. “I spent this whole week trying to find one legitimate reason, other than my own fear, as to why I can’t go all-in with you, and I couldn’t.”

Despite his candor, my guard was all the way up tonight. Maybe it was the emotional toll of the weekend. Seeing Tobias was a reminder of my own poor judgment in the past and how easy it was to be hurt by someone you thought you knew.

But more importantly, my sense that life was short was stronger than ever now. I had no tolerance for games or bullshit anymore.

“So, you’re looking for reasons not to be with me?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t mean it like that. I’m not hoping for a reason not to be with you. I was trying to…I guess…somehow ensure I don’t end up getting hurt. But I finally had an epiphany. I realized I can never guarantee that. I can never guarantee we won’t hurt each other. It’s not something you can rule out a hundred percent, because nothing is guaranteed in life. In the end, it comes down to whether I need you more than I care about the possibility of getting hurt. And that answer is yes. I need you. So fucking badly.”

My heart began to crack open a little, despite my best efforts to keep it closed. He was telling me everything I wanted to hear, but I wasn’t going to fully open my heart to him until I was one hundred percent convinced he meant what he was saying.

My experience with Hollis thus far had trained me to tread very carefully.

“How do I know you’re not going to backtrack again? Seriously, Hollis, I can’t take it even one more time.”

I thought back to my conversation at the lake with Bree. “I made Bree a promise this weekend. All she asked of me is that I fight for true love. Can you believe that? I would have given her anything she wanted. But out of all of the things she could have wished for, my finding true love, true happiness, matters to her most. And she understands that the biggest impediment to finding it…is myself.”