“This is a private affair,” I reply, imitating my grandmother’s haughtiness. Shockingly, it works.
“What’s the guest’s name?” he asks, opening something up on a computer.
“Thomas Prescott,” I reply. He raises a brow. I imagine fucking Thomas Prescott is about as big a celebrity as this place sees, and he’s instantly suspicious. “I don’t need him,” I clarify,“but he has someone with him. Easton Walsh. Easton’s the one we need to get ahold of.”
After a moment, he dials the number. I can hear it ringing, but no one answers.
He shrugs. “I’m sorry. They’re not picking up.”
Goddammit.
I look around me for any other solution, but I see none. Hawk said he’d once planned to just sit in a hotel lobby and watch Kelsey walk through in the morning like a creep. I guess I could do the same. I could wait until morning. But if they’re not answering the phone at this point, I assume she’s already gotten back together with him.
I walk outside and climb in the car, dejected.
The bellman starts to scold me and I just drive away, too exhausted and demoralized to even tell him to fuck off.
Jesus, the timing of this...was terrible. And now it’s too late.
I get to the neighborhood and drive at a snail’s pace because I’m not ready to go back to the house.
In the distance, I spy something, though. I turn on my brights, trying not to get my hopes up and...
Maybe I’m not too late after all.
36
EASTON
“It’ll just take a minute,” Thomas said three times, before I finally agreed to go on this walk down the street with him.
Elijah would only have had to ask once.
He’s clearly anxious, but when Thomas is stressed, I don’t want to smooth his hair back with my hand, or rub his shoulder. When things go badly for him, I simply brace myself in case things go bad for me too.
For Elijah, though, I wanted to be the screen door that keeps the bad stuff outside, I wanted to be the shade blocking excess sun on a bright day. And I could try to tell myself that Thomas would neverneedme to worry about these things on his behalf, but it really isn’t that at all. It’s simply that if I ever loved him—and I don’t think I did—I didn’t love him in the right way. I didn’t love him so much that I’d destroy myself if it would somehow benefit him. Yes, I made sacrifices while dating him, but they weren’t because I wanted to make him happy—they were just because they seemed like things a better person would give up. The sun, potato chips, late nights, a drink with dinner? It was impossible to argue on their behalf. But if he’d told me his dreamwas to move to Outer Mongolia, I’d have said,“Have fun without me.”I don’t care about him enough to truly put him first.
Maybe the real reason he got cold feet is because he realized that before I did.
I sigh as we hit the second block of this walk, which happens to be in the direction of his hotel. He doesn’t seem to have noticed that I’m in four-inch heels, though he should, since I’m now taller than him. I’m definitely not walking all the way to his room, if that’s what he’s got planned.
My feet hurt, my heart is broken, and all I want to do in the entire world is go curl up in bed.
“I can’t keep walking, Thomas,” I tell him. “I’m sorry. I really need to?—”
“You said you wanted a romantic proposal, and I’m trying to do what you wanted,” he argues. “It’s another block at most.”
Oh. God. No.
No.
I didn’t want to do this here, or tonight, but I absolutely cannot let him propose. I suspected it when we were on the stairs seeing Kelsey and Hawk off. I knew it for a fact once I walked out of the library.
I deserve more than Elijah, with his inability to commit and the shit he just pulled. But Thomas deserves more than a girl who’d leave with Elijah in the first place. He doesn’t need to know all the ugly details. He just needs to know it’s over.
“Don’t,” I tell him firmly. Sighing, I drop onto the stairs to someone’s walkway and start unstrapping my heels. “I don’t want you to propose.”
He sits beside me, pulling his suit pants up so he’s not straining the knees. “You said?—”
