My heart beats harder against my chest. “Sure. Let me grab a pair of sneakers.”
Once I have my shoes tied, I follow Lana out of the house and into the summer night. For the first couple of minutes, neither of us says anything. Crickets fill the silence as we walk toward the dock behind the guesthouse. It’s a much smaller version of the one by the main house, mainly meant for a single boat and a couple of chairs at the end.
Both of us take a seat at the end of the dock. Lana shakes off her flip-flops and swings her legs over the edge so the tips of her toes can graze the water.
“So…” I start because she clearly won’t.
Her eyes flicker from the lake to my face. “What do you have planned after we sell the house?”
The air in my lungs stalls. “What?”
“Do you think you’ll go back to Chicago?”
“Would it matter to you if I go?”
She stares at her toes tracing the water. “It shouldn’t.”
My eyes narrow. “That’s not a real answer.”
Her eyes roll. “Neither is answering my question with another question.”
My lips curve into a small smile. “True. To be honest, I’m not sure what I have planned after selling the house. I didn’t really think that far ahead.”
“Of course you didn’t. It must be nice to not have a job or any responsibilities outside of living in the moment.”
My smile drops. “It’s kind of lonely.”
She snorts. “What? How is that even possible? You have a bajillion friends.”
“I had a bajillion friends. Turns out a lot of them were either too toxic to be around or too fed up with my shitty coping mechanisms.”
Her brows scrunch together like she can’t fathom what I’m telling her. “Iris—”
“Is busy starting her life with my brother.”
“So? That doesn’t mean she can’t spend time with you.”
“She does, but we can’t hang out nearly as much as we used to. And that’s fine. I understand things are different now.”
Her head tilts. “Different how?”
I look up at the starlit sky to avoid her perceptive stare. “I don’t expect her to stop living her life just because I don’t have one.”
“You have a life,” she counters.
A bitter laugh escapes me. “An empty one.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m a nobody, Lana.”
“You’re somebody to me.” Her hand clasps on to mine.
You’re somebody to me.
Her words act like medicine, sinking into my skin and easing the pain of years’ worth of damage from feeling inadequate.
“Do you really mean that?” I rasp.
Her head barely moves as she nods.
“Why didn’t you ask me to stay last night?” I ask the question I’ve been beating myself up over since then.
“Because I was scared,” she admits, her voice barely audible over the leaves rustling around us from a strong gust of wind.
“Scared of what?” I give her hand a squeeze.
“Plenty of things when it comes to you.”
Such a Lana answer. “Pick one.”
“I’m afraid what will happen once you leave again.”
“What if I stayed?” The question bursts out of me without any hesitancy.
Smooth, Cal.
She blinks. “What?”
“I’m not in a rush to go anywhere, so what if I stuck around Lake Wisteria for a while?”
Her forehead pinches. “Why would you do that?”
“Isn’t the answer obvious?” I tuck the fluttering strand of hair behind her ear before tracing the soft curve. Her breathing shifts as she looks up at me with her large brown eyes that reflect the moon above us.
Her lips part, and I find the idea of kissing her impossible to ignore. I lean forward and capture her mouth with mine, swallowing her gasp.
The kiss ends as quickly as it began, yet she breathes heavy like she just ran a race.
“You want to stay?” The words rush out of her mouth.
“Only if you want me to—”
She initiates the kiss this time, cutting off the last bit of my sentence with her mouth pressing against mine. The buzz starts at my lips and travels down my spine.
Kissing Lana feels like the world started spinning again. Like I’ve been frozen in place until she reentered my life, tilting it back on its axis.
I’m not sure how long we kiss for. At some point, she breaks away to straddle my lap. We both groan when she grinds down against my cock. Her head drops to the side, so I kiss my way up her neck, teasing her until she ends up rocking back and forth against me.
Everything about our kiss feels different. New. Hopeful.
And I want to make sure that hope never dies. No matter what it takes.
35
ALANA
“You can’t seriously be going on a vacation with Cal of all people.” Violet launches a dart at the circle she drew directly over Cal’s face marked with a 50. She found the photo of Cal in a suit and tie on the Kane Company’s webpage and printed it out for our emergency girls’ night.
This time, I wasn’t the one who called the meeting. Delilah and Violet did after I told them the news about Dreamland and our vacation next week.
“You try telling Cami no after he offered to take her to Dreamland. She has been begging me to go ever since she saw that commercial on the TV two years ago.”
“Why would he even offer a trip like that in the first place? What does he get out of it?” Delilah takes a sip of her drink before standing and grabbing a dart from the table. Today is a good day for her and her arthritis, so she wants to take advantage.
“Besides increasing his odds of getting into Alana’s pants?” Violet snorts.
A little too late for that.
I shoot her a look. “Say what you want about Cal and me, but I know he is doing this because he likes Cami. I can see it in the way they interact. The thing they have is…special.”
He is everything I want in a partner and more.
Delilah’s frown deepens. “Oh, no.” She and Violet spare a glance at each other.
“What?” I ask.
“You’ve got that look in your eyes.”
“What look?”
“The I’m falling in love with Callahan Kane look.”
I laugh. “What kind is that?”
Both Delilah and Violet try to imitate it and fail miserably, which causes us all to break out into laughter.
“I’m not falling in love with him.” At least I don’t think I am. We have only just started taking the next step, so there is no possible way I would be falling in love. It’s way too soon.
Right? A small swell of panic builds in my chest, right above my heart.
“I don’t know…” Delilah rocks back on her shoes.
“Trust me. I would know seeing as I’ve already done it once before.”
“That’s the thing about falling in love. You don’t exactly expect it to happen until you’re crash landing into someone else’s arms, wondering how the hell you lost the battle against gravity in the first place.”
Shit.
Alana Valentina Castillo, you were supposed to be smarter. Wiser. Stronger.
There is no way I would do something as stupid as fall in love with the same man twice, right? My heart throbs at the very idea.