My lips sucked behind my teeth, and I looked down, avoiding her gaze.
“You fucking bitch,” Lana declared. “What!”
“It was just an orgasm,” I said, thinking about the storage room. “He didn’t even touch me. And then the other night on video chat—“
“You had video sex with him and didn’t tell me?!”
“I’m still trying to figure out if it was a dream,” I said.
“What about with Tyler?” she asked. “When was the last time you had sex with him?”
“May,” I answered. It had been hard for me to get in the mood with Tyler when I could only think about Gavin.
Lana threw her hands in the air. “So, since Gavin came back?”
“Like two weeks after, yeah,” I said. “It just… it hasn’t felt right. Any intimacy with Tyler has felt more like I was cheating on Gavin than the other way around. There’s something… it feels different with Gavin. And I don’t just mean love. I mean… it’s something more profound. It’s like my soul craves his, and I know that sounds crazy coming from me—“
“You have no idea how proud that makes me,” Lana beamed.
Heat filled my cheeks, and I didn’t know if it was from thinking of him or the red wine. I sighed and looked around at the state of my apartment, and the realization of why it had never felt like a home seemed to hit me.
“Where do I start?” I said softly.
“You grab one suitcase, just like you did the last time, and you put everything you can’t live without first,” Lana said. “Because in the off-chance you don’t get to come back, at least you have that.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “And after?”
Lana smiled. “I think you know.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE - GAVIN
I PACED BACK and forth in front of the windows overlooking the beach in my apartment, my hands wringing behind my neck with anxiety. My stomach hadn’t stopped twisting. My heart hadn’t stopped pounding. I had tried to go for a swim, watch a movie, and even work, but nothing could sway my mind from the turmoil tearing me down.
I’m not running.
The words kept repeating over and over in my head, along with the look on her face when she’d said it, the tears in her eyes. I think I’d blacked out when I’d fallen to my knees.
Gods, I was fucking desperate.
I kept looking at my phone, thinking she might text and ask me to help her pack or pick her up, but the minutes had turned into hours, and I had nearly chucked my phone into the ocean out of frustration.
Sunset had long passed by the time I collected myself enough to order food. Hunger had eluded me, yet I knew I needed to eat or at least have food in case…
In case she showed up.
I sat on my balcony and stared at the stars, the noise of the ocean the only sound in the dark.
It was the only thing I knew how to do at that moment.
My doorbell rang. I looked at my phone one more time—still nothing.
I left it on the balcony as I went to the door and opened it. As I'd asked, the delivery guy had left the bags on the ground, and I scooped them up to bring them inside. I’d gotten no further than taking two containers out of the bags when my doorbell rang again. I wondered if they’d forgotten to bring something in my order or if Persephone was checking in. She had texted since we’d parted, asking for Chloe’s number, though I hadn’t texted her back.
The doorbell rang again, and I called out a “Coming!” to whoever was on the other side as I crumpled up the bags and stashed them away. I still had sticky sauce on one of my fingers from a leak in the sweet and sour container and was licking it off my finger when I opened the door.
My heart dropped at the sight of Chloe standing there, tears in her eyes…
And a suitcase.
