My So-Called Sex Life (How to Date, #1)(70)

That’s…incredible and awful. I turn toward Axel, unsuspecting as he chats with Steven. Axel glances at me, a dirty look in his eyes, like he can’t wait to get me alone.

I have to look away and confirm I heard right. “You want me to leave tonight?”

“Well, sort of. More like in the next two hours. I’ve got my Google Flights open and we can get you on the next flight out of Copenhagen to go to Paris for the event tomorrow. Lancaster Abel would be so happy if you could do this.”

My heart hurts. I want so badly to stay here, to have one wild and free night with Axel. To talk.

But I don’t want to disappoint my publisher or my readers. “Of course,” I say, sounding hollow. Feeling hollow.

They rattle off details, including that a car is coming for me in fifteen minutes.

When I hang up, Steven has taken off. It’s just Axel and me outside the hotel on the Danish street.

I must be frowning because his expression shifts as he walks to my side. His sly smile burns off, replaced by question marks. When he reaches me, he looks…guarded. “What’s going on?”

My throat is too tight to speak. I feel sick. This is so dumb. I should not feel this emotional. “I have to leave. I’m going to Paris in…” I croak the next words. “Fifteen minutes.”

He blinks, startled. His eyes flicker with surprise, maybe even hurt. “You do?”

I quickly explain, finishing with, “I’m sorry.”

But that sounds so weak. Except I don’t know what else to say. I was going to ask to maybe date you in a few months, but hey, gotta go.

I can’t say that before I take off. I can’t ask him what I haven’t truly figured out myself.

Especially when a black town car pulls up to the curb ahead of schedule. A driver hops out, holds up a sign.

Valentine.

No Huxley.

Just me.

There isn’t even time for goodbye. I need to grab my bag from the bell desk. I rush inside, snagging my stuff, then return to the sidewalk, right outside the entrance. Axel’s still here, but he no longer looks shell-shocked.

He seems cool. In control. He’s sporting his nothing bothers me face as he leans against the hotel facade.

“Sorry about tonight,” I say, but that barely covers it.

He waves a dismissive hand. “No big deal.”

But it’s a huge deal, I want to scream. Only he seems like the Axel of before, and I don’t know what to make of it.

I manage a confused, “I’ll see you in New York.”

Then, like a confident, aloof hero in a romance novel, he cups my jaw and presses a quick, final kiss to my lips.

Final. It feels final.

“This was fun. And we’ll get back to work in New York,” he says, and that’s that. “Like we planned.”

The only-for-the-trip trope is over. And so are we.

I slide into the car, feeling rattled and thrown. The vehicle pulls onto the road to head to the airport.

I turn my face to the window, looking back, but Axel is already walking away.





36





ROMANCE FUCK-UP


Hazel

I need to revise my prior statement.

You can never go wrong with a night in Paris…unless you’re sitting stupidly on your hotel bed, staring blankly out the window at the Seine.

Feeling empty. Sad. And utterly confused.

What the hell is going on?

I’ve played those last two minutes in front of the hotel in Copenhagen over and over. I replayed them on the short flight to Paris. I replayed them in the car on the way to the hotel. I replayed them when I ate dinner with the bookstore manager from An Open Book and she prepped me for tomorrow.

But alone again, as moonlight streams across the city, I still don’t get it.

Axel was so…Axel 1.0.

With a heavy sigh, I pick up my phone, checking the screen in case he’s called or texted or sent, I don’t know, a gift certificate for a lifetime supply of coffee. Or maybe a note that says he’ll always hold the tuna for me. Instead, my messages are empty except for a note from my mom.

Mama Valentine: You must really be having a wonderful time on your trip if I haven’t gotten a single note.





I’m a bad daughter. I didn’t reach out to her while I was traveling. But she ends her note with a smiley face, so I know she’s not really mad at me.

Maybe she knows I need her. Mother’s intuition. It’s late in Paris, creeping toward midnight. But it’s early evening in Connecticut, and she’s probably just starting to close up at the garden shop she owns in Wistful.

The ache in my chest is too intense to weather alone, so I call her.

She answers right away. “Hey, are you having an amazing time?”

My heart sobs. But I swallow the tears and choke out, “Mom, do you think I have a terrible track record in romance?”

A door squeaks. She must be shutting the door to her office. “Sweetheart. Of course not.”

What? How can she say that? “Have you seen the string of failed relationships behind me?”

She laughs softly, sympathetically. “We all have that.”

True, true. But doesn’t she get that mine is embarrassingly bad, especially given what I do for a living? I pick at unseen lint on the duvet. “But I choose cocky, unavailable men. I choose men who cheat on me. I choose men who care only about themselves.”