Page 48 of 500 First Editions (The Romantics #3)

AUTUMN

UNDER A TREE, F-U-C-K-I-N-G

M y knees bounced as I sat in the blasé gray and white hallway outside my dad’s office. The two chairs outside his door made it feel like I was waiting for a principal to see me.

Maybe that third cup of coffee was a bad idea.

The secretary gave me a pitying smile when I glanced at the clock that hung over her head.

I went back to focusing on my jittering feet and re-reading the text I had gotten that had turned around the entire trip.

Dad

Let’s have lunch. Meet at my office on Thursday?

My dad worked in a third-floor office building in downtown Topeka. It was all beige walls, gray carpet, and potted plants that were barely alive.

I had a working theory that corporate boards had a set number of potted bamboo palms that were required per ten square feet of office space.

I really hated bamboo palms. There were so many more interesting plants.

I glanced at the time on my phone, ignoring a text from Ryan asking how things had gone with my dad.

. . . Because I had been waiting a very long time.

I had garnered plenty of strange looks as I made my way through the lobby and from hallway passersby because of my hair color. I was glad I’d had the forethought to dress up a little. My dad rounded the corner, talking to yet another copy–and-pasted man in a suit, and my heart leaped.

I stood and adjusted the smart trousers I had paired with sandals and an airy tucked-in button up. “Dad!” I said as I smoothed out the blouse I had thrown on this morning, then clasped my hands together so I stopped fidgeting.

My dad stalled in his path, pausing mid-sentence. He looked . . . surprised to see me.

“Thanks for chatting, Greg. I’ll let you get on with your day,” the other man said before offering a polite nod and dipping into an adjacent office.

“Autumn,” Dad said as he stuck his hands in the pockets of his slacks. “What brings you out this way?”

. . . What brought me out this way?

I drove all the way to Topeka to have lunch with him and he wanted to know what brought me out this way?

The confusion written on my face must have told him all he needed to know.

“Why don’t we step into my office?” he said as he opened the door and ushered me in. He craned his head back out, “Allison, will you tell Mr. Meyers that I’ll be a few minutes late to the pitch meeting?”

“Yes, Mr. Hart,” the receptionist said as she picked up her desk phone to make the call.

The click of the office door might as well have been a shotgun blast. The two of us faced each other in a standoff. The tension was thicker than a gust of summer heat.

“Why does it seem like you didn’t know I was going to be here?” I hedged.

A wry laugh that was full of age and completely disingenuous slipped from his mouth. It was the kind of laugh he probably used in meetings to seem easygoing. “I didn’t know you were coming by, Autumn.”

But . . . But we had . . .

“You look well,” he said as he scratched the back of his neck.

I look well? What the fuck?

“You didn’t know that we made plans three days ago?”

He let out that robotic laugh again. “Honest to God, I didn’t know you were coming.”

I pulled my phone out of my purse and swiped through my text messages until I found the quick back and forth where I had excitedly accepted his invitation to grab lunch.

It was right there.

His brow furrowed as I showed him the screen. “Autumn, I didn’t make those plans. I’m gearing up for our fall campaign launch. I have back-to-back meetings today.”

My stomach sank as he pulled out his own phone and scrolled through his messages. His face went copy paper white when he saw the exact texts I had on my screen. “I didn’t—I wouldn’t have?—”

I reared back. “You wouldn’t have ?”

“Autumn, I—” he paused and looked at the time stamp. “Your sister sent these.”

My blood went volcanic. “She what?”

“I was having dinner with her and she asked to use my phone because hers was dead.”

I couldn’t even begin to unpack every facet of what he just said. I couldn’t even wrap my head around what Amber had done. And for what?

What did she have to gain by humiliating me?

A whisper was the only thing I could get out. “Why won’t you just talk to me?”

He clammed up. Greg Hart—my own father—didn’t have a damn thing to say to me.

“I’ve tried to see you for months. And the one time I think I get to see you, you’re telling me that it was Amber being . . . being Amber?!”

He turned and pulled a tissue out of the box on his desk, and dabbed the beading sweat on his forehead. “Perhaps we can schedule something before you leave town,” he offered magnanimously. Like I was just some angry client he was trying to appease before he lost the deal.

I bit back my tears and shouldered my purse. For the last two and a half months, I had chosen to play second fiddle to my mom because I was trying to bond with her. I was really fucking trying. But I wasn’t about to play second fiddle to someone who had chosen every other weekend and radio silence.

“No. We don’t have to,” I said as I turned to the door. “I hope your meetings go well. They sound very important.”

Greg huffed. “Autumn?—”

“Have a nice day, Allison,” I said to the receptionist as I hurried out of the building.

Ryan found me under the willow tree. I hadn’t even bothered to go inside after I pulled into the driveway. I hadn’t even texted him on the way back.

I didn’t know how to put any of it into words.

Instead of saying anything, he sat down behind me and wrapped his thick, tattooed arms around me. I felt the nudge of his glasses as he kissed my temple.

The sun melted from the heavens, dripping in blazing oranges and vivid pinks.

I cried the entire drive back, draining my tears well before I got back to him. It was a good thing. I was tired of crying. I was tired of feeling miserable. Ryan was the only person who had kept me going over the last few months. He shouldn’t have to wade through more tears.

“Amber set me up,” I rasped.

Ryan tipped his head back and swore at the heavens.

“God, that was so humiliating,” I croaked.

“I waited in front of his office for two hours, only for him to have no clue I was coming. He wouldn’t even tell me why he never talks to me anymore.

He talks to Amber. They see each other all the time.

” It felt like my throat was being sandblasted as I tried to get the words out.

Ryan held me tighter, tucking my head beneath his chin as if he could shield me from all the hurt. I appreciated that he didn’t try to make excuses or tell me it would be okay.

Because it wasn’t okay. It wouldn’t be okay.

“I just wanted to tell my dad about you,” I whispered.

There was a long silence before Ryan spoke up. “You told Shep.”

“I just want a sister who doesn’t make it her life’s mission to make me miserable,” I said, my words landing somewhere between hurt, frustration, and fury.

“You have Whitney and Wander.”

“I just want a mom who doesn’t treat me like an inconvenience.”

“You have Lisa.”

I looked at the sky as hot tears blistered my cheeks. “I just want to be important enough for someone to want me.”

He lowered his head, scraping his stubbled jaw along my cheek. “You’re the most important thing in the world to me.”

“I’m so tired of trying to make them love me,” I choked out as I turned and crumbled in his chest.

Ryan’s arms were the safest place in the world. At some point, they had become my haven. The place I ran to without a second thought.

“I wish they could see what I see when I look at you,” he said gently as he cradled my head and combed his fingers through my hair.

“You’re everything to me. You’ve created a life for yourself that’s unapologetically full of adventure.

You’re one of the hardest workers I’ve ever met.

You see the good in everything. You believe the best in everyone.

You make magic in the mundane—in road trip coffee and bumper-to-bumper traffic.

And if they stopped to see even a little bit of that, they’d know it too.

It’s a fucking shame that they refuse to. ”

I didn’t say anything else.

Eventually, the sun dipped below the horizon and the stars came out to put on a show. Evening wind whistled through the languid limbs of the willow tree. Even though we both had work to do—because jobs stopped for no one—Ryan sat with me, not making a peep about getting up and going inside.

“Why do they hate me?” I asked the universe.

Ryan answered in her place. “It’s easy to hate people who feel no guilt for being exactly who they are and pushing for everything they want in life. Entitlement makes belligerently wicked, malevolent people.”

“It’s not fair.”

“I know,” he said as he kissed me. “It’s not fair and—God—I wish I could fix it for you.”

I tightened my hold on him, terrified that, if I let go, he would discard me too. I needed his kiss like I needed air. I drank him in hungrily, desperate to feel something other than absolute misery.

But Ryan broke the kiss with a worried look in his eyes. “Wills?—”

“Please don’t push me away,” I begged in a feverish hurry. I was pleading and making a damn fool of myself, but I couldn’t bear to be discarded by anyone else.

His eyes widened in shock, then concern. Thick brows furrowed over the strong line of his nose. “I would never,” he said gently, letting the breeze whisk away the promise.

Anxiety took the reins. “Please, Ryan,” I whispered. It felt like my heart had been flayed open, and I was bleeding out. I didn’t want anyone else to see me dying inside.

But it was Ryan.

Ryan, who I had opened up to because I thought he didn’t matter.

Ryan, who I had cried to because I thought he would leave.

Ryan, who didn’t know me, but also knew me better than anyone else.

“Please.”

Ryan cradled the back of my head, keeping me safe as he flipped us in one smooth motion. My back hit the ground, but his palm broke the fall—cushioning my head as he laid me out beneath him under twilight skies.