Page 15 of She's Like the Wind

It made my chest ache. My throat close. Made me want to tell her things I’d buried years ago.

Run, Gage! Get the hell away from here.

Shestillmade me feel too much—like my heart had cracked open and she was slipping inside.

I blinked, jaw clenched. I forced my feelings down.

Naomi looked up then. Toward me. Toward the iron lace fence where I stood.

But she couldn’t see me.

I was consumed by the darkness.

She looked like she could see something, feel something. She didn’t smile, just looked like someone who had nothing left to give.

My heart shriveled some more. She wasn’thappy. I knew her well enough to see that.

Did I do that to her?

The man left, and she turned the store's sign from open to closed and disappeared into her sensuous world of silk and lace.

I stood on the street, feeling empty until the last rays of the sun faded off the glass.

I knew, with an aching certainty, that even though I’d done my best, I was still walking around full of her, not being able to forget, to move on.

CHAPTER 6

Naomi

For Scarlett, tomorrow might have been another day, but for me, it felt like heartache on repeat. It had now been nearly three months since we ended.

Mardi Gras had come and gone, but tourist season was still in full, riotous swing—at least until summer rolled in and threw a wet, humid cloth over everything.

Fewer tourists.

Fewer locals.

Days hotter than Hades.

Nights lonelier than an echo in an empty house

My apartment, my safe haven—the silence of which had been peaceful just weeks ago, was now loud with memories.

I got up after another restless night, and on my way to the bathroom, I stopped in the middle of mybedroom—bare feet on the warm wooden floors, the soft morning light slanting through the sheer curtains.

It stretched across the pale walls and landed on the space next to mine on my bed.

His space.

Still empty.

Still aching.

There were no dents in the pillow where Gage used to lie, no faint scent of cedar and sawdust clinging to the sheets. He’d always smelled like work and wind and the Quarter.

I went into the bathroom and shut the door, only to find his T-shirt still hanging from the hook on the door—the one he’d carelessly left the last time he spent the night. I liked to pretend I hadn’t noticed it was still there.

But I had because I leaned against it, took his scent in like I was starved, so that I could start my day without him.