Page 108 of Between Hello and Goodbye

Chapter Eighteen

Friday night, I opened the door to my condo and tossed the keys on the front table, then dropped both coat and bag on the floor. The sun was setting somewhere behind gray clouds, the sky growing darker by the minute. No sooner did I slump on my couch, exhausted from another long day on the new Red Bull account, than thoughts of Asher infiltrated my brain and heart.

Three weeks and not one word from him. Granted, I hadn’t reached out either, but he was the one who initiated the breakup. I had my pride after all.

But pride, I realized, was about as useful as…something not useful.

I was too drained to think. My new duties as partner at the agency filled my daytime hours and then some, but the nights were long, quiet stretches where I had nothing to do but miss him.

I called for Chinese takeout and settled in to watch some Netflix. I flipped aimlessly through a zillion shows, none looking appealing. At the ridiculously early hour of eight o’clock, I settled myself into bed and picked up the book on my nightstand. I’d begun readingThe Age of Innocenceat the condo in Kauai when I’d first arrived all those months ago and had bought myself a copy to finish here.

It was the story of a young aristocrat in the 1870’s—Newland Archer—who was engaged to a pretty young woman but finds himself falling in love with the intriguing, scandal-ridden Countess Olenska. The prose was a tad old-fashioned for my taste, but the story smacked me in the face. Newland and the Countess kept meeting after long absences, stealing moments here and there, neither able to give their love freely. Duty to the lives they’d already chosenkept them apart.

I let the book fall against my chest.

My heart clenched and I willed the tears back as I touched the quartz pendant that lay against my skin. What had all this personal growth gotten me? I was slaying at my job, but I’d always had that capability. What I hadn’t known was that I had the depth to care about someone as deeply as I cared about Asher. Like a canyon of layers, each with different hues and shades, imbedded in the core of me.

But now it all had nowhere to go.

Asher wanted a break from me. Maybe permanently. He’d chosen his life and I’d chosen mine and they were half a world away. I set the book aside and removed the pendant. I laid it in my jewelry box on my dresser, then—before I could talk myself out of it—I picked up my phone.

Let’s go out,I texted.

Viv replied less than a minute later.For real?

It’d been a while since we’d spoken, and I wasn’t sure if our break was also permanent.

Meet me at Oltini’s? One hour.

You don’t have to tell me twice,she replied, followed by champagne emojis.

“Yes, lots of that,” I muttered.

I got dressed, ignoring the warning bells in my head—and heart—that told me it was a mistake.

But hell, I’d made plenty of those. Never stopped me before.

A slant of silvery winter light fell over me and I groaned. It’d been a while since I’d had a hangover; I’d forgotten how much fun they were.

“Oh, God,” I mumbled and wrapped myself tighter in the Egyptian cotton sheets. Cotton sheets that were notmycotton sheets. Different color, different scent…

They smell like a man.

I peeked an eye beneath and found I was clad only in my black silk bra and panties.

“Oh shit,” I shot to sitting, a terrible pain hammering my heart worse than any headache. “Oh no. Oh no, no, no…”

“Hi.”

I gave a shriek and pulled the bedsheets up to my neck. On the other side of my tangle of hair, sat a man in a chair near the window in this—his—huge bedroom. Blond, big, sexy in sleep pants and an undershirt.

He cocked an amused smile. “You don’t remember me, do you?”

“Umm…”

Last night had been a blur. Cocktails with Viv, the company of handsome, rich gentlemen…and then not much else.

“Sorry.” I held my head in my hands. “But don’t take it personally—I don’t remember last night at all.”