The Hookup Handbook(51)
Despite the sugar stirred into my coffee, there’s suddenly a bitter taste in my mouth and a hollowness in my chest.
? ? ?
My month working at the escort agency flew by in an instant, but the two weeks since Case and I parted ways feels like a lifetime. Each day erodes away into another with barely any sleep in between.
Cutting things off was the right thing to do, wasn’t it? So, why does every day feel like a new kind of torture?
From my morning coffee to my evenings of recital prep at the dance studio, everything reminds me of Case. Even now, as I lock up the studio for the night and step out into the parking lot, the rain clouds gathering overhead bring me back to the night of that horrible storm, when the roads were too bad and I had to spend the night at Case’s house. I remember the crashing of thunder outside as we shared our first kiss.
What I wouldn’t do to go back to that.
As I make the familiar drive home, squinting through the rain, I review a dozen different alternate scenarios in my head.
There’s one where Case turns down my offer and we never sleep together. Another where we never even kiss at all. The summer could have gone as planned—if I would have kept things strictly professional at work, I could have wandered into any bar at night and picked up a guy who would have suited me just fine for the fling I had in mind. It would have been so much easier, so much less messy.
But it wouldn’t have been love. And when you pick love, you take all the hurt that comes with it.
I’m a block from the apartment when my phone buzzes. Probably a severe storm warning with the way this rain is coming down. I’ll have to cancel my plans with Allison tonight if the bad weather keeps up.
Once I’m safely parked in the lot outside our building, I reach for my phone, but what I find is far beyond what anyone could forecast.
It’s a text from Case. The first either of us have sent each other since I broke things off.
Can we talk?
Chapter Twenty-Two
Case
Sitting in the back corner of a small, trendy coffee shop halfway between my place and Sienna’s, I take a sip of my coffee and go over my speech in my head.
I know I look like shit. I feel like shit too. Ever since Sienna ended things between us, I’ve been a fucking mess. The black eye is gone now, but my emotional wounds aren’t. Obviously, I’m not happy with how things went down, and of course, Ryder won’t talk to me and has been avoiding coming to my house at all costs. And as for Sienna . . . well, let’s just say I’m feeling pretty damn lucky that she agreed to meet me here at all.
Without her presence the past couple of weeks, my office has been lonely and cold. I didn’t realize how much I liked the scent of her perfume or the amount of shit she gave me all the time until it was gone.
I was an idiot to think we could keep things strictly physical—she’s too kind, too smart, too fucking perfect in every way. And to think that I might have screwed with her relationship with her brother . . . it’s too much. For the past two weeks, the only thing I’ve been able to think about is how fucking stupid I was for not speaking up when she was breaking things off.
Just as I’m about to shame-spiral for the hundredth time in the past fourteen days, Sienna walks through the door in frayed jeans and a white T-shirt, her golden hair swept over one shoulder. She’s beautiful.
My breath catches in my chest when I lay eyes on her, and it feels like a twenty-pound weight has dropped to the bottom of my stomach.
Get it the fuck together, Case. This is your last chance. Your only chance.
Our eyes meet across the room, and I smile, giving her a small nod.
A tight smile stretches across her face as she makes her way over, weaving through the maze of wooden tables and plush linen armchairs to get to me. When she sees the iced coffee I ordered for her waiting at our table, an unreadable expression flashes across her perfect face.
“You didn’t have to do that,” she says as she sits across from me, swirling the plastic cup so the ice bumps and jostles against the sides.
“It felt like the least I could do at this point.”
“Well, thanks, I guess.”
She takes a long sip of the drink, her gaze trained on the table, then on the menu on the wall, then on the well-dressed couple a few tables over—basically, anywhere but on me. It stings, but it is what it is.
It’s in this moment I realize I’m just going to have to launch into it. Apparently, there’s not a whole lot of room for pleasantries between us at this point.
“Look, Sienna, before I say anything else, I want to thank you for meeting with me. I know you wanted space since you . . . well, since things ended, and I respect that. So it’s really big of you to let me say my piece anyway.”
She nods, briefly meeting my eyes before looking back down at her coffee. “You made it sound important.”
Not exactly a win, but sure, I’ll take it.
“So, I guess I just wanted to say that I’m sorry. For a lot of things—for hitting your brother, for letting things get so complicated between us, for not being man enough to just come out and be honest about what was going on. But most of all, I’m sorry for coming between you and Ryder. The thought that your relationship might be changed or damaged because I didn’t have the balls to tell him . . . that kills me more than anything else.”