“Some.”
“Room service?” she tries. “I could order coffee.”
“Sure.”
She nods but doesn’t move. Her fingers twist the hem of my shirt.
“I’ll order coffee,” she says quietly, and turns away.
I watch her move through the suite, careful to give me a wide berth. She picks up the room service menu from the desk and studies it before ordering.
A sharp guilt twists in my gut.
This is what I wanted, right? The distance of a clean break before things get messier than they already are.
She’ll find someone else, I tell myself.Someone who can actually be there. Someone who doesn’t come with a body bag clause.
My stomach clenches at the thought. Riley with another man. Riley moving on. Riley laughing in someone else’s kitchen, crying on someone else’s shoulder, looking at someone else the way she looked at me in that Elvis chapel.
But the silence is crushing me, and watching her pretend she’s fine when she’s clearly falling apart is worse than anything I endured on my last tour.
“I need to clear my head.” The words come out rougher than I intended. “I’m going for a walk.”
Riley nods without turning around. “Okay.”
No argument. No questions. Just that single, hollow word.
I grab my jacket and head for the door. My hand is on the handle when I glance back—just for a second, I see her shoulders start to shake.
I walk out the door, and I hate myself for making her feel this way.
The Vegas Stripin daylight is a different beast entirely.
Without the neon and the darkness to hide behind, everything looks cheaper. Sadder. Tourists shuffle past with vacant eyes, clutching oversized drinks at ten in the morning. The unseasonably hot desert heat presses down like a weight, and I walk without direction, hands shoved in my pockets, trying to outpace the image of Riley’s face crumpling as I walked out.
I replay every moment of the weekend. The way she laughed at the concert, tears streaming down her cheeks from pure joy. The way she looked at me in that blue dress, like I could be the one man to make her happy forever. The way she whispered, “You’re the only good man I know,”while we swayed together in that dive bar.
And then last night. Her face tilted up toward mine on the balcony, her eyes soft with trust and want. The way she leaned into my hand when I cupped her cheek. And then—fuck—the kiss. The way her lips parted for me, the soft moan that vibrated through her when I pulled her closer. Fifteen years of friendship, and in that single moment, I understood what I’d been missing. What I’d been denying myself.
The love of my life has been right in front of me this whole damn time.
The realization hits me so hard I have to stop walking. I brace a hand against a pillar, breathing through the sudden tightness in my chest.
I’m in love with Riley. Not the familiar, platonic love of friendship—the desperate, consuming, can’t-live-without-her kind of love. The kind that makes men do stupid things like get married by Elvis at three in the morning.
And instead of telling her that, I pulled away. Told her I couldn’t do this. Left her alone on a balcony with the taste of me still on her lips.
I’m the biggest idiot who ever lived.
I end up near a plaza off the main drag, quieter than The Strip, with a fountain and some benches. Families mill around—kids chasing each other, couples holding hands, the usual chaos of people living their lives.
That’s when I see them.
A soldier in uniform, ACUs crisp despite the heat, with a woman at his side and two kids in tow. The little girl—maybe three years old—is crying. She’s pointing at an ice cream cone on the sidewalk, already melting in the heat of the morning. A toddler tragedy.
The soldier scoops her up, settles her on his hip, and presses a kiss to her forehead. “Hey, hey. We’ll get you another one, baby girl. Don’t cry.”
His wife laughs and wipes the girl’s tears with a napkin while their son tugs at Dad’s free hand, chattering about something. The soldier looks down at the boy with pure, uncomplicated joy on his face, and my soul aches.
