MY HANDS BALLED into fists as I shoved them in my pockets and made my way back to my floor. There seemed to be a bottomless pit in my stomach full of all the things I wanted to say, yet didn’t. As soon as I re-entered my penthouse, it felt like something was missing. It was probably because I knew she was gone. And I knew there wasn’t any chance of her coming back.
As I made my way to my bedroom, her scent seemed to pollinate all my air, which only irritated my eyes and throat. I removed my hands from my pockets and fisted my eyelids, but it seemed all that did was blur my vision. “Fuck,” I cursed. Why was saying goodbye to Blue after just two weeks harder to handle than a goodbye to my wife of eleven years?
Ignoring the discomfort taking over every molecule of my body, I stepped into my bedroom and collected my phone. After typing in my four-digit passcode, I dialled Noah.
The moment I considered hanging up, he answered.
“Nate.”
“Lil bro,” I mumbled. “You sound like you’re still in bed.”
“I am,” he grunted. “Heavy night.”
“Are you home?”
“Nah, I’m at Hudson’s. We brought the party back with us. He was a little knocked up, but not so bad he couldn’t celebrate.”
I swiped a hand across my jaw. “I’m gutted I missed it.”
“Have you watched the replay?”
“I haven’t had a chance.”
“No?” I heard a scuffle of his duvet and then movement through the line before he spoke again. “Why not?” A door closed, and then I listened to the sound of his piss as it hit the bottom of the toilet.
“Blue’s gone home,” I said. It didn’t explain anything, but speaking the words into the universe rather than dealing with them on my own released whatever it was I’d pent up.
“Home?”
“Yeah. Finley’s just taken her to the airport,” I carried on. “James insisted she went back to Miami. He didn’t think the apprenticeship… or this place, was good for her.”
“That the reason you missed the fight?” he asked.
“Yeah, I guess. Sort of. That and the past.”
“That explains it,” he mumbled.
“What?”
“You’re weird as shit.”
The fuck?
“I’m weird?”
He sighed. “Yeah, Nate. Why are you ringing me to tell me she’s gone home instead of going after her?”
I frowned, choosing to speak my thoughts aloud. “The fuck are you on about?”
“No reason to be coy with me, man. I saw you.”
“Saw me?”
“Yeah, I saw the both of you.”
“No idea what you think you saw, Noah… but I doubt it was anything.” I shook my head. What the hell could he have seen?
“Wednesday,” he stated, flushing the toilet as he spoke. “I realised you left your phone on your desk the night you were rushing outta work, and when I went back into the office again later that evening to double-check everything was ready for fight night, I realised it’d gone. So I checked the CCTV–”
“You checked the CCTV?”
“–and that’s when I saw the two of you on the roof.”
“The roof?” I grunted.
“Yeah, the two of you looked like you were having fun, man.”
I rubbed at my forehead. “You didn’t think to mention it?”
“Who was I to say anything? I didn’t think much about it until the next day. The way you looked at her at the weigh in. Shit, the both of you couldn’t have made it any more fucking obvious. And when Sophia showed up, fuck me, Blue looked at Sophia like she was the other woman, and she was your girl.”
I didn’t have a response to that. How had I not realised it myself? In fact, how had I not realised that Noah had?
“You want me to continue?” He yawned, like this whole conversation was tiresome or irrelevant. “James showed up, mentioned Blue’s birthday dinner… and well, guess I figured you’d tell me when you were ready. And if you didn’t, then I wasn’t gonna bring it up. Until last night, when you got aggy and went looking for her.”
“I don’t know what to say,” I mumbled.
“Say nothing, brother. I don’t know how many times I need to tell you that you deserve to be happy.”
“She’s eighteen, Noah.” My mouth went dry. “There’s still so much shit to settle with Sophia, I–”
He interrupted me. “Who gives a shit? Fuck Sophia. You wanna know something else?” Huffing a breath, he went on. “Sophia cornered me last night and told me how you only married her because you wanted to provide a home for me.” My mouth opened to respond, but he spoke again. “I’ve no idea what the fuck she expected me to say. Whether she wanted me to take sides in whatever warfare you two have going on, but like I said to her, I already figured that shit out long ago. The two of you fought so loud it was hard not to pay attention.”
“I’m sorry, Noah, I… shit.” I pinched my fingers against the bridge of my nose. “Not sure how I feel about you knowing that,” I admitted. Sophia not leaving things alone after I’d left her outside The Lagoon pissed me off, but it didn’t shock me. “You were just a kid,” I mumbled. “She had no right to drag you into our mess.”
“Yeah, well… don’t apologise,” he grunted. “Sophia’s just… Sophia. I couldn’t have asked for a better brother. And I’m being sappy as fuck, so that’s my cue to hang up.”
“Wait,” I said, leaning into my phone. “Blue… do you think–”
“For fuck’s sake. You’re my big brother. Ain’t I meant to be getting advice from you? If you want your girl to stay, then you oughta get a hold of yourself, you daft prick. If you don’t… well, if you don’t, then let her fly home and move the hell on.”
Even if I’d wanted to, I didn’t have the chance to respond, because the next thing I heard was a feminine voice and a “Gotta go,” before he hung up.
I wasn’t sure what to make of what he knew, or what to do when it came to chasing after ‘my girl.’ Just because Noah was cool with it didn’t mean society would be. Just because I wanted to wake up every day next to her didn’t mean she felt the same way. And then there was James… which, wasn’t worth thinking about.
Because I was absolutely not going after ‘my girl.’
Because she was not my fucking girl.
In a fret, I threw my phone to the bed and took off towards the kitchen. I set my eyes on the top cupboard as I entered, knowing the only thing to fix my frustration was behind the door that housed it. And then I was there, reaching up for my antidote, only to find something else in its place.
I pulled off the sticky note attached to the bottle, my eyebrows pinching as I read the words aloud. “Think twice.”
My stomach rolled, and I slammed the cupboard closed with a curse.
Then I grabbed my car keys.
BLUE
ONCE I SAID my goodbyes to Finley, I entered the airport and went in search of my father. He’d texted me to tell me he would be waiting for me at the check-in desk inside terminal three.
I followed the signs, and as I turned the corner, I spotted him ready and waiting at the front of the queue. He waved me over when he noticed me, but no more than that. It probably had something to do with his phone glued to his ear. Pulling my luggage along, I held my chin high so my sunglasses didn’t fall from my face. I didn’t need my father asking me why my eyes were red and bloodshot. I was too tired to talk, never mind fight. A queue had begun to form behind him by the time I reached him. He didn’t seem to care, preoccupied with whatever he’d yet to handle through the phone.
He continued his conversation as he lifted his suitcase onto the conveyor belt and handed the man at the desk his passport. In response, the man stuck a luggage tag onto the handle of his luggage and handed him back his passport before repeating the action with mine. Embarrassed by my father’s lack of manners, I apologised on his behalf.
“What were you apologising for?” my father asked me once he’d hung up his phone.
“You were rude,” I stated. “What was so important that you couldn’t have handled it later?”
He side-eyed me. “Business.”
“Figures.”
He wrapped his arm around my shoulder as we made our way to security. “Count yourself lucky you won’t ever have to deal with any.”
There was that word again.
Lucky.
We reached security, and I placed my bag onto the conveyor belt to be checked for any dangerous items. Then I stepped through the metal detector. As I waited for my father from the other side, I wondered what the hell I was doing.
I collected my bag, and even as I placed it back onto my arm, I couldn’t stop thinking why I was going back home to Miami when Miami had nothing to offer me.
Still, I didn’t say anything, and when they cleared father through security behind me, we proceeded to walk to our boarding gate.
“We have an hour,” I stated as I sat on one of the airport’s long line of chairs.
“What are you doing sitting there? We have the comfort of a private lobby.” He pointed towards a double door.
I didn’t want the comfort of a private lobby. I didn’t want to be here at all.
With a scratch of his chin, he settled down beside me on a chair, and we both stared ahead.
After a few minutes of preening his suit, he asked, “You want to come home, don’t you?”
“Whatever gave you that impression?”
“You didn’t fight me.”
“Do you really care about what I want, dad?”
He scoffed. “What a silly question. You’re my daughter; of course, I care.”
I’m not sure where I found my courage, but the next words to leave my mouth didn’t just shake him–they shook me.
“Do you miss her? Mum.”
In my peripheral, I watched as he smoothed over the ink of my mother’s initials on his ring finger. And then, barely loud enough for me to hear, he said, “All the time.”
“Why do you do it, dad? The countless women, the parties, the–”
“That’s enough, Blue.” He looked around, seemingly embarrassed that we were having this conversation in public.
My lips locked, and under the frame of my glasses, my eyes closed. He wouldn’t talk about it, and I had no idea why I’d expected him to. It was probably another fifteen minutes before he spoke again. I hadn’t expected him to continue where we’d left off, but that’s precisely what happened.
“Your mother was my soulmate. A love like ours doesn’t come around twice.”
Something in my stomach clenched and squeezed. “How do you know for sure?”
“I’ve had my fair share of women, as you know… but not one of them could compare to the way I felt when I was in the presence of your mother. It didn’t matter what we were doing. It didn’t matter where we were; we connected like either end of a rope. If you ever find a love like that, you hold on to it. No matter how tangled the rope gets or how many knots form. You work to unravel them, one by one. You ever find a love like mine and your mother’s, you tie yourself to it, and for the fucking life of you, princess, you don’t let it go.”
It was the first time my father had truly opened up to me. It didn’t explain everything–it didn’t explain why he was the way he was–why he’d coddled me my whole life–but the advice he gave me was invaluable.
I realised then that I wasn’t just afraid of living, or scared of dying.
I was afraid I’d already lost that once in a lifetime kind of love.
Scared that it had slipped through my fingers.
But most of all, I was terrified of getting on that plane and wondering what if.
I slid my sunglasses from my head and placed them into my tote bag, and then I startled myself by wrapping my arms around my father and telling him, “I think I’m making a mistake.”
Because maybe mine and Walker’s rope wasn’t tethered, just tangled. And if I didn’t stay–if we didn’t try–we’d never know.
Did I really want to spend the rest of my life wondering what if?
Did I really want to look back on my life in ten, twenty years’ time, and wonder what we could’ve been?
Who I could’ve been?
The two of us stood from the chair, and he opened and closed his mouth. “Walker?” he said, his eyes bouncing from mine to some place over my shoulder.
My brows creased.
“Walker.” He brushed past me, and I swivelled on my feet, confused, only to see Walker walking towards us.
He grew closer with every powered step, and my heart struck harder every time his feet touched the floor. I half expected him to stop when he reached my father, because there was no way the man who refused to believe in happy ever afters was about to have the same conversation with me as I’d just had with myself.
I was completely taken off guard when he didn’t. And I barely had time to blink before he stopped short in front of me.
There was a small space between our chests, and as he pulled our invisible string, I fell forward, eradicating it completely. His arm threaded around my back, and his fingers caught hold of my neck. His breath fanned the side of my face, and though his lips touched my ear, his words–somehow before he even spoke them–rushed to the centre of my chest.
“I want you to stay.”
“Stay?” I murmured.
“Stay, Blue. Let me hold you when it thunders.”
I tilted my head back to look at him, my stomach rushing with butterflies as his eyes captured mine. He was waiting for me to respond, but I couldn’t seem to find my voice. Maybe he thought I didn’t hear him, maybe he thought I didn’t want him. That I didn’t want to stay–that I didn’t even consider a future with him in it.
“Please,” he said, pleading for me to hear him. “If you let me, I’ll repaint the sky for you.”
I wanted to say yes.
I wanted to speak.
But my father was right behind him, and my words were lost.
I took a breath to slow my heart rate, and though I felt eyes on us, Walker shielded me from everyone else.
It was just us.
Us and… “My dad–”
He shook his head before trailing his gaze all over my face. “Let me worry about it.” He squeezed my neck, forcing my attention his way. “I can’t promise you the world, Blue Sterling. I can’t promise you children, or the happiness you spoke about that first night on my sofa. I can’t even promise you a month from now. I don’t know if I can love you as we grow old, but I know I fell in love with you like a zephyr.” A soft breeze. His lips brushed against mine. “Slowly, then all at once.”
My father’s hand clutched Walker’s shoulder in a bid to pull him away. Walker flinched, but he continued to fight for me.
“Stay, Blue. And if you don’t want to stay for me, then how about you think twice? Think twice about everything you want. Don’t let anyone stop you. Don’t let me.”
“You read my note?” I murmured. “Did you… did you drink?”
“Yeah–no,” he said, shaking his head. “I didn’t drink.” His fingers lost their grip on my neck as he stared at me apologetically. As if he was disappointed in himself, reaching for the bottle before deciding to reach for me.
“If you asked me to give it up for you, I would,” he said as his fingers pressed into the middle of my back. “If it meant you’d stay.”
I shook my head. “That’s a lot, Nate, you can’t use that–”
He interrupted me. “Shit. I know, I know. I’m not good at this,” he admitted. “What I meant to say is, I think you’re worth it, Blue Sterling. I think you’re worth every goddamn side effect.”
He unthreaded his arm from my back, and though his line of sight didn’t waver from me, I glanced between him and my father, who stood blindsided, shifting his gaze from me to the man standing in front of me. I’d never seen the look my father wore on his face. And I wasn’t sure if he could hear every quiet word between me and Walker. I wasn’t sure what was about to go down–if anything. And I don’t know what he saw in my eyes, but he removed his hand from Walker’s shoulder and scrubbed it down his face with force, muttering something under his breath I couldn’t make out.
For a brief moment, I wondered why he wasn’t reacting. I wondered why he wasn’t kicking off. But then I remembered our conversation. The one we were having before Walker showed up.
He’d been the one to tell me if I ever encountered a love like this, I should never let it go. I wasn’t sure if he was going to, but he knew full well he’d be a hypocrite if he stood in my way.
“Last call for passengers. Please proceed urgently to gate five.”
The three of us seemed to divide our attention as the announcement through the speaker sounded. But Walker’s eyes came back to mine as he whispered words only meant for my ears. “Are you going to make me beg, baby? You want me on my knees?”
The image of him on his knees for me made my lips spread, even if it wasn’t the same way he insinuated. This man, with his cold heart and brooding frown, didn’t believe in fairy tales. Still, I dropped my bag to the floor and hauled myself into his arms. His hands slid under my thighs as my legs wrapped around his waist, and just as I broke out into a full-blown smile, he did something that surprised us both. He was looking at me when he said it, but his words were meant for my father still standing behind him.
“I’m in love with your daughter, James.”
My father grunted. “I heard that.”
“Consider this my hard turn,” he said, and I frowned, not understanding. “I’m putting trust into your opinion of me.”
I went to speak, but Walker silenced me. “Don’t ask questions,” he said in a breath against my lips.
“Okay,” I replied.
“Okay.” He smirked, pressing his forehead against mine. “I think I might hate that word.” And without giving me another chance to speak, he asked me again, “Will you stay?”
“I’ll stay,” I whispered. I felt him exhale and physically felt the tension flood from his body as he held me. The words on the tip of my tongue were basic compared to the way he confessed his love for me, but I spoke them anyway. “I’ll stay because I fell in love with you too,” I murmured. “I think I might have fallen in love with you before I knew what it meant.”
His eyes lit up in a way I’d never seen them shine before, and he pressed a kiss against my temple as I glided down his body like a ballerina and landed on my feet. Silently, I wondered what happened next. I wondered what our future looked like.
He brought his hands up to skate across my cheeks, and as if he knew what I was thinking, he said, “We’ll figure it out together.” And then, taking a deep breath, he turned to face my father.
My father had minutes–minutes until the departure gate was closed–though I knew he’d be able to pull strings if he missed it the same way I had the day I left Miami.
“I can’t be sorry for the way I feel,” Walker told him, sliding his hands into his pockets as he looked down at my father’s clenched fists.
“Walker,” he remarked. But even as he said his name, I didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary in his tone. He looked from Walker to me, and with a quick shake of his head, he unclenched his fist and held out his hand to the man who just admitted he was in love with me.
Two weeks was barely enough time to make a dent. To fall in love with a person. But what was time, if not for the moments that made it up? Every intention. Every choice. How every action someone made always bled into the next.
As my father shook Walker’s hand, I mulled over all those times he’d told me Walker was a good man.
How he came in clutch every time.
The way he’d trusted him to take care of me above anyone else.
And then, I thought, not for the first time, nothing in my life ever happened by coincidence.
“I have to catch my flight,” my father said. “But we’ll discuss this… later.” I’m sure his words were meant for the both of us, but he directed them at Walker. I knew he meant them. “I know you’ll take care of her,” he went on to say. And I knew he meant that too.
It seemed my father had already heard, if not seen enough, to leave without a fight.
Walked nodded as their hands retreated, and then stepped away so I could say my goodbyes.
“Like a rope,” I explained as my father embraced me.
He exhaled a pent-up breath as the final warning came through the airport speakers, and then with one final look between me and Walker he said, “Then you don’t let him go, princess.”
