Hours later, I was tossing and turning in my bed. I couldn’t sleep, my mind envisioning Trip just waiting for me in that big, lonely room at the TRU. My thoughts went back and forth, trying to rationalize just one last night with him. There was no chance of getting caught. My fiancé was on a plane right then, and Trip would be leaving on one the next day. Who would know?
Me. I would know.
I was already feeling extraordinarily guilty for letting things get as far as they did earlier. At the time, I kept telling myself that at least we weren’t having sex. It was only a kiss.
Just a kiss that broke my heart and melted me down to my core. That’s all. No biggie.
What the hell was I doing? How could I let things get to this?
I agonized over the questions swirling around in my head: What would Trip think when I didn’t show up? How long would he wait?
Was he waiting?
Was he sitting up in his bed right then, flipping channels on the TV, watching the clock, listening for a knock on the door? Or had he given up hours before and simply gone to sleep? Or worse… had he just gone down to the lobby bar and found a replacement body to warm his bed?
It was torture. I was torturing myself.
Should I call him? Just to let him know I wasn’t coming?
No. He’d find a way to talk me into coming over. Just the sound of his voice would make me cave.
I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t do that to Devin. I made a few mistakes over the past weeks, slipped up a couple times. And that’s all I was willing to accept blame for doing. For making mistakes. I never set out to intentionally cheat on my fiancé. And I was never, ever, ever going to do it again. That was a fact.
Which, I guess, meant that I could never see Trip again for the rest of my life.
He was the only temptation I couldn’t trust myself to overcome. And with good reason.
Just you, Trip. It’s always been you.
I knew it always would be. He would always be my Achilles heel, would always own a piece of my heart. Best to just avoid him entirely. Forever. That thought caused a pain in my soul which I tried, unsuccessfully, to dismiss. I’d already gone nine years without seeing him. It’s not that I couldn’t have done so indefinitely. But seeing him again had only served to fuel the old obsession, and it was killing me.
It took every ounce of willpower I possessed not to bolt out my front door, run the forty blocks to his hotel, and leap into his waiting arms.
But I didn’t do it.
I didn’t make that choice.
*
The next morning, with pretty much zero sleep in me, I hauled myself out of bed and absentmindedly went through my morning ritual in a full-on daze. I just couldn’t get it together.
Somehow, though, I managed to get dressed, put on a pair of matching shoes, and get myself up to Howell House, miraculously without being hit by a bus.
I fired up my workstation and checked the messages on my voicemail. I wasn’t really paying attention until an interesting one popped up. I listened as Diana Cavanaugh, agent at Beachlight Publishing, asked if I was looking for representation. She had seen the article and wanted to discuss expanding Trip’s and my story, as she thought it would make a great book. I took down her number out of curiosity, but I’d never written anything of length before and never had any designs on doing so. But it couldn’t hurt to hear her out.
I waited for Devin to get back from his Morning Powwow, the few hours he spent every Monday holed up in the conference room with all the other department heads of Howell House.
I spent my wait trying to banish my guilt, trying to wash the memory of Trip from my thoughts, which was no easy feat, let me tell you.
When I saw that Devin was finally back in his office, I went in and closed the door behind me. Seeing his face in person sent a stab of remorse through me, but it’s not as though I could change things. What was done was done. And it really and truly was done. I’d made sure of that when I resisted the urge to go to the hotel.
I didn’t throw my arm out patting myself on the back or anything. The fact was, I had crossed over a few lines with my ex-boyfriend the past few days.
But at least I hadn’t crossed that one.
It was as good a time as any to make a fresh start.
“Welcome back,” I offered pleasantly.
“Well, hello there, Miss Warren,” he answered, before turning his attention back toward the flotsam of paperwork on his desk.
I wish I could say that Devin’s eyes lit up when he saw me, but they didn’t. He was smiling and enthusiastic with his greeting, however, and I supposed it would have been more surprising had he freaked out and jumped me the second I was in his office.