You’re meeting with your agent today, right? Good luck!
It wasn’t surprising that Reese remembered that Sydney had mentioned her upcoming meeting. Sydney had told her Friday morning, when she’d arrived back in Florida safely, what her week was looking like so far.
They’d been texting more frequently as the days wore on, but it seemed like they’d both decided to stick to safe topics, like they’d tacitly agreed that whatever was happening between them deserved an in-person conversation and not confusing and fragmented texts between their—or, more realistically, Reese’s—busy schedules.
So no, she hadn’t told Reese how excited she was to see her again. No proclamations. No digging into her conversation with her mom and how she’d basically admitted how much she liked Reese. That was staying in the vault for the time being.
She was instead being casual. Cool, calm, and collected. Which maybe you could say was true about her on the tennis court, but her current personal life was another matter entirely.
Reese had burrowed inside her mind and wouldn’t leave, and Sydney was counting down the days until she’d be back in Stoneport and they could pick up where they’d leftoff.
Sydney - 11:44 a.m.
Sure am :) We’ll see what Sara has to say about my life after professional tennis
Reese Devereux - 11:44 a.m.
I’m sure it will be a good conversation. Great at least to catch up with her.
Sydney - 11:45 a.m.
Fingers crossed! Heading there now
Sydney put her phone back on her seat and eased out of her driveway, heading toward the highway to Miami, where Sara Santiago’s office was located.
It was a dreary Tuesday afternoon, the air so thick she could take a bite out of it. She cranked up the air conditioner and, for the first time in weeks, put on her pre-match playlist to get herself centered.
There was a storm predicted to make landfall later in the week, though she crossed her fingers that it would calm into little more than rain once it crossed east to west over the state.
With time on her hands on her almost hour-long drive down to Miami, and with thousands of other cars that seemed unencumbered by the impending storm, she took their cue and acted like this was any other day.
On any other day, at least for the last few weeks, she’d be pitching back and forth like a swaying palm tree, between thinking about her future and wondering what Reese Devereux was thinking about. Especially since their kiss. Double especially since she’d word-vomited to her mom yesterday. It had made everything feel more blindingly real, vocalizing it to someone on her side for the first time who didn’t know about the ruse.
She’d told her mom the truth, at least as much as she could. Besides the nature of their real meeting, whichwastechnically a meet-cute, with Reese accidentally walking in on Sydney half naked to give her towels, and the fact that Sydney had wanted tounderstand why Grant had done what he’d done, she’d tried to be as honest as possible.
So they hadn’t actually met at the Paribas Open in California. That didn’t change the truth of what she did tell her mom: that every moment she spent with Reese, she felt alight and free, like she was filled with possibility for the first time in months.
And even though it had started because of Grant, all Sydney could think about was how impressed she was withReese. It was honestly insane to consider that she’d spent so many years focusing on the wrong Devereux.
In the early years of her relationship with Grant, she’d been charmed by him. She’d appreciated his confidence, that he seemed committed to taking on the reins of The Devereux Group and was willing to work to make that happen. She adored that even if it meant they needed to be separated—hah!—they shared common traits; namely, persistence and dedication to the things that were important to them.
Not that she had the siblings to look at in juxtaposition to one another, but with fresh eyes and a mending sense of confidence in herself, Sydney was realizing Grant didn’t hold a candle to his older sister any way she sliced, diced, or minced it.
Reese was unstoppable, a force to be reckoned with, and it made Sydney like her all the more for it. Tackling ownership of the inn. Coming back to Stoneport in spite of her messy familial relationships. Pushing past Megan’s betrayal.
When she and Grant had split, at least she’d had tennis to throw herself into. Reese, after Megan turned her back on their relationship, didn’t even have her company any longer.
Reese was friendly but intensely private, and Sydney felt that she had somehow lucked into the chance of a lifetime, getting to know more about her. She didn’t want it to stop, and as she meandered along with the always persistent traffic on I-95, her thoughts wandered.
Not to what had already happened, but to whatcouldhappen. To hypotheticals and wishful thinking and… daydreams… thathad started taking up residence in Sydney’s mind more often than she’d admitted to herself since whatever was happening between them had started.
Sydney’s past life hadn’t had much time for daydreams. For what-ifs. In fact, thinking that way was antithetical and incongruent to achieving her goals. She didn’twonder. She manifested. She planned. She focused.
And now? Nothing about her future was a sure thing, and she was finding that she didn’t really mind, especially as curiosity bloomed wild in her mind’s eye, morphing into a million different questions she wanted to ask Reese when given the chance.
Did Reese like to sleep in late if given the choice?
What genre did she like to read? And would she laugh or gasp while sitting on the sofa, feet tucked underneath her, as something surprising happened in her book?
