Propping the phone against the gilded gold frame of the large vanity mirror, I wet a washcloth. Adding a hefty amount of face cleanser, I vigorously scrub my face as though I can wipe away the sudden chaos that Fallon’s reappearance has stirred in me along with my makeup.
A burst of static crackles over the speaker, followed by the muted thud of a door closing.
“I’m in the bedroom. No peeping husband ears. Talk.”
Drying my face with a hand towel, I sink onto the edge of the pedestal bathtub. “I just told you. Fallon is here. He asked me to dinner.”
“You didn’t say anything about dinner.”
“That’s beside the point.”
“Then get to the bloody point!” she shouts with exasperation.
“Have you been bingeingBridgertonagain?”
“Elizabeth, I swear to god, if you don’t start explaining why the hell Fallon Montgomery suddenly popped back into thepicture after being a ghost for two decades, I’m flying to Venice and strangling you.”
“I don’t know! He was just”—I fling my hand in the air and gesture helplessly as though trying to conjure the exact moment he appeared—“there.”
“How did he look? I bet he looked good.”
She makes a lascivious hum fraught with implied dirty thoughts that would normally make me playfully roll my eyes.
This time, it doesn’t.
The sound of his voice and the image of him standing a few feet away, looking at me with those startling pale eyes, sunlight catching on his dark-blond hair, will forever be burned into my mind.
I look back at the mirror and scowl at my reflection, as if it has betrayed me.
Snatching the phone off the vanity, I carry it with me as I resume my pacing.
“Yes, he looked good.”
Fallon always looked good. He had a way of commanding attention without trying. Gorgeous, tall, and intimidating, he had a presence that felt larger than life. But now?Holy hell.Time has only sharpened what was already devastating.
“You went silent. Did we get disconnected? Hello?”
I stop mid-step in front of the window. The view of the Venetian lagoon stretches out before me, the water shimmering under the early evening lights. The beauty of the scene seems almost cruel because, for the first time in a very long time, I’m able to once again see the world in multicolor, instead of the gray I’ve been existing in for the past three years.
Sighing, I drop my forehead to the cool glass and trace a finger through the condensation of my breath.
“I’m here.”
“I just texted Trevor. He said he had no idea Fallon was in Venice.”
“Meredith! I don’t need him getting involved?—”
My phone vibrates with an incoming text. From Trevor. Great.
“Next time some earth-shattering thing happens in my life, you’ll be the last person I call.”
She has the audacity to laugh. “Yeah, right.” Her tone shifts and becomes serious. “How are you feeling about seeing him again?”
Too many things to quantify.
“Happy. Guilty because I’m happy.”
“It’s okay to feel happy,” she softly replies. “It’s okay to live again. Ryder would want that for you.”
