There was a massive difference between being in love and falling in love.
Being in love was like a never-ending flight through the clouds. Storms were likely. Turbulence a given. But they didn’t last forever. The clouds always returned.
Falling was more like a terrifying test of trust where you’re expected to leap from death-defying altitudes with nothing more than one flawed person with his arms held open, acting as your safety net.
Sometimes, you crashed, shattering into a million pieces, when the person you trusted wasn’t there to catch you. I’d learned that firsthand.
But, as I stared at Levee’s pleading eyes as she asked for ten minutes of my time to hopefully enlighten me about the man who had me plummeting in an all-out free fall, I couldn’t help but wonder if Henry was falling too.
And if he was…was I the one who was supposed to be catching him?
AS A SUCCESSFUL songwriter, I prided myself in not only the music, but the ability to transfer simple words into tangible emotions. Over the week without Evan, I realized something truly remarkable.
I didn’t miss him.
Not at all.
Because, according to the dictionary, the word miss meant to notice or discover the absence of something.
I missed how content I felt in his arms.
I missed the way his breath felt whispering across my chest as he slept at my side.
I missed his stoic smiles and their ability to fill my soul for no other reason than they were aimed at me.
I missed the idea of forever and the promise of a future.
No, I didn’t miss Evan at all.
Because you don’t notice or discover the absence of a man like that. That pain was engrained so deeply it was inescapable. It devoured me on a second-by-second basis and consumed my every thought—conscious or not. Sleep wasn’t even a reprieve.
I craved him on every level.
But especially the level where I got to walk into his house and have him wrap me in his strong arms while I hid from the world, or the one where I collapsed naked and sated next to him in bed, knowing that the mind-blowing orgasm wasn’t even going to be the best part of my evening.
I told myself that it was irrational to feel so strongly about a man I had only been seeing for a couple of months.
But, in reality, I knew that the only irrational part was when I’d walked away.
“Henry, where’s Carter?” Levee called from the doorway of my dressing room as I stared at my phone, willing it to ring.
Evan had stopped calling a few days earlier. It was for the best. It meant I didn’t have to have a nervous breakdown every time it rang.
“No idea,” I replied, pushing to my feet and walking her way. “Hey, beautiful,” I purred, pulling her in for a tight squeeze. “How’s my baby?”
“She’s good, but I can’t find Linc and I need someone to escort Sam past the press so he can get to his seat.” She huffed anxiously.
We were in L.A. for a special all-acoustic charity concert Levee was heading. It was a cross between a formal affair and a drunken night of entertainment. The floor level of the arena had been transformed into a lavish dinner party, with tickets having been sold for tens of thousands of dollars. Meanwhile, the upper levels had been sold for donations of any size on a first-come, first-serve basis. It had been Levee’s idea to make tickets affordable to everyone, despite their tax bracket. And it had been a smashing success, bringing out the best in everyone. Those tickets had sold out in a matter of minutes, ranging from one dollar to ten thousand. With the average of each seat going for over seven hundred dollars, it was far more profitable than we’d ever hoped. But, then again, it was the concert of the year. There were over fifteen of the biggest names in the industry, spanning all genres, slated to perform that night.
First up? Me.
“Are you okay?” I rubbed her stomach. “I’m sure he’ll be back in a minute.”
“I’m just stressed about the show—Oh my God, did you feel that?” Grabbing my hand, she moved it just below her belly button. “Shhh…” she said as two hard thumps landed on my palm.
“What the…” I yelled, snatching my hand away as if her spawn had been about to claw its way out, Alien-style.
“Give me back your hand,” she demanded. “Bree wants to say hi. She’s really active right now.”
I backed away as quickly as possible without breaking into a dead sprint—which was not-so-secretly what I wanted to do. “Can she maybe say hi when she isn’t floating in a sack of bodily fluid at Spa de Levee?”
“Stop being an ass and give me your hand. This is important to me. You’re important to me.”
My chest warmed, and as much as it grossed me out, I begrudgingly lifted my hand in her direction. “That’s not fair. You know I can’t say no when you con me like that.”
She smirked mischievously. “No con. But I know you can’t say no.”