The Taj Mahal
It amazed me, the difference three days made in my life. Seventy-two hours ago, I’d been on board, barely agreeing to come on this insane trip. Then I’d given up the school-sponsored excursion to Delhi and thrown in my luggage with the Renegades.
Never thought I’d see the Renegades touring the Taj Mahal, but in all honesty, I never thought I’d see the day where Paxton Wilder was willing to take a six-hundred-mile detour from his planned adventure in order to appease a woman. Add in the fact that said woman was my best friend, and it was even more bizarre. But I was thankful, not just for the chartered plane and the opportunity to experience this, but for the way he treated Leah. Maybe he really had changed.
Maybe it was possible for a Renegade to truly love someone more than the sport.
Not Landon, though. He’d chosen the Renegades over love, or at least my love, which I was reminded of nearly every time I saw him. At least he’d kept his distance. We’re less than a day into this trip, so I probably shouldn’t get my hopes up.
“I can be monogamous,” Landon said from above me as I crouched down to get a better picture of the Taj Mahal.
So much for keeping his distance.
“Are you still hung up on that?” I asked, adjusting the focus of my lens to get a better angle. Had the guy been reading my mind?
“You seriously think I can’t be?”
I sighed, blowing a lone strand of black hair from my face as I stood. I’d tied it up, most of the purple highlights hidden in the updo. “It’s been three days since I said that. Isn’t there anything else on your mind? Like, oh, I don’t know, the giant monument in front of you?”
“I can’t believe you don’t think I can be a one-woman guy.”
I gave up on avoiding the question. The guy was freaking determined. “I think you don’t want to be. Maybe you can. Maybe it really doesn’t matter to me.”
I stood and sent a longing look in Leah’s direction where she walked hand in hand with Wilder. Stopping to grab pictures hadn’t been my best idea, but being the third wheel in that lovefest was uncomfortable as hell. But at least the camera crews were following the lovebirds and leaving me the hell alone for the moment.
“It should matter,” he said.
“To me?” I craned my neck to look up at him and took a step back so we weren’t so close.
“Well, yeah.” He tucked his thumbs in his pockets.
“I can think of about a hundred things off the top of my head that matter more to me than the frequency of women through that revolving door you call a bed.” Okay, maybe that was a lie. But just a little one.
“Well, that’s a shame, because there’s nothing I can think of that matters more to me than who sleeps in your bed.”
Well, shit, I was speechless. Luckily, I recovered quickly.
“Does this matter right now? Because we are standing in front of one of the most beautiful tributes to love in the world, and I’d honestly like to enjoy it without arguing with you.”
“I never said I wanted to argue,” he, ironically, argued as we walked the path toward the giant marble mausoleum. The afternoon sun softened the white glow of the structure, giving it an ethereal glow.
“Yet here you are, arguing with me.” Could he be any more frustrating?
He grinned like he’d followed my exact train of thought.
“What?” I snapped.
“Just enjoying our progress.” He shrugged, his eyes dancing.
“Progress?”
“A week ago you weren’t speaking to me. Now I’ve gotten you to go away with me and we’re bickering like we used to. Progress.”
“I did not go away with you!”
“Well, by definition, we are away, and you are standing with me.”
“Oh my God, I’m not talking about this anymore.”
“Fine. Change of subject. How is it you can find a grave to be a monument to love?”
Every step we took brought us closer to the structure, the details appearing and consuming my vision. “Just look at it,” I said as we paused outside the entrance. “Look at the beauty, the symmetry of the inscriptions, the hue of the marble. It’s perfect. He loved his wife so much that he built her a monument to be unrivaled.”
I felt his eyes on me but couldn’t tear mine away from the intricate carvings along the arches. My attention was constantly shifting, drawn by a new element. “It’s exquisite.”
“I never thought you were a romantic.”
I shrugged. “I’m not. But when you’re shown a love like this, what other choice do you have?”
“It’s a beautiful building,” he said as we started up the steps.
“No,” I told him softly, taken in by every nuance of the monument. “It’s perfection. The symmetry is perfect, the art is perfect, the setting is perfect. Everything is taken into account.”
I glanced over to see him observing the architecture as we made our way around the space. “They’re both buried here?” he asked.
“They’re in the crypt below,” I answered. “And the only imperfection lies where the marble was broken when Shah Jahan was laid to rest with his beloved.”
“How beloved could she have been if he had other wives?”
“You’re one to preach on monogamy,” I drawled.
“There you go again,” he muttered. “I’ve done it before. It’s possible. With the right person.”
I looked up at him, skepticism crinkling my forehead. “Right. And how did that work for you?”
He stepped in front of me and turned, forcing me to stop. After a tense moment of silence, I finally brought my eyes up the wide expanse of his chest, over the lips I knew were impossibly soft, and to those eyes that currently looked incredibly wounded by my sharp tongue. “I didn’t say I didn’t fuck it up. I said it was possible for me to be with one woman. Love one woman.”
My stomach clenched, and my grip on my camera tightened. I tried to ignore the slamming of my heart and the way that tiny little flame of hope I’d tried to snuff out flared up just a bit. Maybe he meant it. Maybe he meant me.
Do not go there. He left you. Destroyed you. He only wants you because you’re unattainable, and once he has you, he’ll mark the notch and move on like last time.
“One woman like me?” I asked, my voice a hell of a lot stronger than I felt.
“Maybe only you,” he said softly.
Don’t let him weaken you. I gathered the bricks of my crumbling defenses and shoved them back into place. “What is it about me? Is it the chase? Are the other girls on board too easy for you, Nova? Am I a convenient game?”
His mouth dropped slightly. “You are anything but convenient. I’ve had parachute malfunctions more convenient than you. You’re the most frustrating, complicated, utterly addictive woman I have ever been around, but you are sure as hell not convenient.”
“So it’s the challenge. Nice to know.” Why did he have to do this here? Why couldn’t he let shit go and leave me in peace? I took one last look around and walked outside the mausoleum, leaving him behind.
I took a breath of the stifling, hot air and wiped the small line of sweat from my forehead. Breathing acid would have been easier than trying to breathe around him.
“Stop walking away from me,” he said as he came out behind me.
“Stop trying to convince me that you could be some devoted…” Lover? Boyfriend? “…guy.”
I kept moving until I reached the edge of the reflection pool and saw Bobby crossing the distance with a cameraman. Perfect fucking timing.
For the thousandth time, I cursed myself for signing that stupid release.
“No, Bobby. Not this,” Landon said, putting his hand over the lens. “I’ll give you whatever the hell you want later, but get this thing out of my fucking face.”
“Landon, it’s part of the experience,” Bobby argued, his safari hat ridiculously out of place.
“It’s my life right now.”
Bobby groaned. “You agreed, and we have every right—”
“And I’ve been pretty damn cooperative up until this moment, but that can stop.”
The two waged a silent war for a minute, then two. Finally Bobby glanced over at me before letting out a dramatic sigh. “You owe me,” he told Landon.
“Whatever you want,” Landon agreed.
Bobby retreated with the camera guy, leaving me with a visibly angry Landon. His frame was tense, his jaw locked, and his eyes narrowed on me. “I never cheated on you. Even the time between, when you were dating Wilder, I never cheated on you. Can you say the same?”
I shook my head. “Nope. I was awful. I dated him and loved you because I was too young and stupid to understand at the time that it was all going to crumble anyway. Our fate was sealed that first time you kissed me.” In the rain. He’d kissed me so thoroughly, our mouths so intertwined, sealed so tight that not even a single drop of water had slipped past our lips.
“Not the first time,” he whispered. “You weren’t his yet then. But he doesn’t know that, does he? I never told him.”
I shook my head. “No. It didn’t seem relevant at the time.”
“It was. Everything was.”
I stepped back, needing space. “It wasn’t. It didn’t matter that we’d met months before, that I had no clue you’d show up at Wilder’s, that you were the same Landon he talked about. It didn’t matter, because what we did was wrong, and we paid for it, right? We all did.”
“I loved you. The entire time we were together, there was no one else. I didn’t want anyone else—just the possibility of you was enough for me.” His voice was clear with the kind of truth I couldn’t bear to hear.
“Stop,” I begged, clutching my camera to my chest.
“I don’t want to.”
But I needed him to. Every time he said something like that—every time he reminded me of what we’d had and how very much I’d stupidly loved him—it shook my resolve, and that wasn’t something I could afford.
Fire heating my blood, I looked up at him, at the eyes that were more blue than hazel today against his collared, rolled-sleeve button-down. “What do you want from me?”
He swallowed. “I want you not to hate me. I want you not to think that I’m some heartless bastard who didn’t love you. I want—”
I couldn’t take another word. What did he understand of love? Love didn’t walk away without a word. It didn’t leave the person who shared its very space writhing in agony and confusion.
“Stop. Look around you. Look at that grave, that crypt. He spent twenty-one years building a place that he thought would be good enough to bury her. Twenty-one years, Landon. You couldn’t even make it two months with me before you ran back to Wilder.”
“Rachel—”
“No. Enough. Look at the towers. Do you see them?”
He sighed, the sound rushed and angry. “What about them?”
“He had them angled away from the mausoleum, just in case there was an earthquake. He made sure that there was no chance they’d fall into her resting place, that they’d hurt her. Even after her death, he protected her. That is love, or at least the kind of love I want. The kind that takes every precaution to protect the person your heart belongs to. The kind that’s an equal partnership, and devotion, and passion, and trust. Sure, I can do without the seventeenth-century polygamy, but the rest…that’s golden. That is love. Love isn’t abandoning the woman you say you love without a word.”
“God…” His eyes squeezed shut tight, and something shifted in me. I didn’t want to hurt him. We’d done enough of that to each other for two lifetimes. I just needed him to understand—needed him to stop inadvertently hurting me.
Reaching for him, I laid my hand against his warm, solid forearm. “I don’t hate you. Sure, I did once, but I grew up and moved on. If that’s all you’re looking for, you have it. I don’t hate you. What happened between us sucked, but I think we can agree that we were both at fault at different points.”
His eyes opened, pleading with me for something he wouldn’t name, and I was grateful for the silence.
“I think we can be friends, but you have to stop pushing me.”
“I can’t. After everything, you’re here, and I can’t stop pushing. Believe me, I’ve tried. I can’t stay away. I go for a walk and end up at your door. I grab lunch, and I find a Cherry Coke in my hand when you know I can’t stand that stuff.”
“Landon—”
“I am incapable of not pushing, because you’re here. The simple fact that you’re near throws every logical thought out the window.”
The slight plea in his voice slid through me, sent chills up my arms. He left you and didn’t bother to even come looking to explain. If I wasn’t here, he’d be chasing his next conquest, because that’s what he was doing now. I just happened to be the one he was pursuing for the moment.
Leah waved to me across the courtyard, and I took the coward’s way out. “Just pretend I’m not here. You were doing fine before I showed up.”
He caught my hand as I moved to leave, but I didn’t look back. Not when he was so close to burrowing through the very defenses he’d caused me to build. “I can’t. Didn’t you hear anything I just said? Every thought I’ve had since you came on board has revolved around you.”
I tensed, and for that second I wished it was enough. Since you came on board… But I couldn’t remember a day I hadn’t thought about him in some way over the last couple years. I licked my dry lips and swallowed past the growing knot in my throat. “Don’t worry. That will go away again as soon as I leave. Out of sight, out of mind, right?”
He let my arm go, and I walked away as calmly as possible, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other as I made my way to Leah.
The truth hurt him, but it hurt me more.
He might have had me on the brain since I got here, but he’d been in my head since the day I met him. Even now, with the hatred and the spite draining away, the need to defend myself against him screamed at me.
It didn’t matter how sweet he was here, how caring, how…Landon; my subconscious wasn’t ever going to let me forget that he’d been the hot stove I’d held my hand to at one point. I still had the scars, and if they weren’t warning enough, the way he’d invaded every aspect of my life since coming aboard should have done the trick. He was everywhere—my classes, the halls, the cafeteria, even my thoughts weren’t safe. If I wasn’t thinking about him, I was fighting back memories, thinking about how to avoid him, how to build stronger defenses against him.
I nearly hit my knees but somehow stayed on my feet as the realization drove itself home. Leah was right.
I’d never stopped thinking about him because I’d never gotten over him.
Fuck. My. Life.
