Page 126 of Love Me Tomorrow

“Oh, yeah. She wanted me to pass a message along to Savannah.”

“She did?” I ask. Over the last number of months, Mina and I have exchanged a few messages here and there. It started as a question on her end, wanting to know what hotels she and Nick should stay at for their honeymoon because they planned to go to Greece, and I’d just been there. Somehow, we fell into a habit of chatting every few weeks about something random. “What did she say?”

From her purse, Aspen pulls out her phone. “Ahem, this is a direct quote: Tell Savannah that she is the badass bachelorette that all of America deserves.”

I laugh at that, my head tipped back. It pings off the metal again and I end up biting back a curse.

Nick steps forward, an arm already reaching for the bell on the bedside table that’s meant to ring for nurse assistance. I swat him away. “I’m okay, really. Just a little bruise, that’s all.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not all,” he says with a frown. “I can get someone if you need it. Just say the word.”

I shake my head. “No, no! Totally fine. I just . . .” Taking a deep breath, I stare up at the three people who wouldn’t be in my life, or in this hospital room at all, if it weren’t for a crazy reality TV dating show. The irony kills me, but at the same time, I wouldn’t have it any other way.Sliding scales.Truth be told, I’m rather content to harbor all these memories close to my chest, especially the one of me headbuttingCelebrity Tea Presentshimself, right into the grave. “Have y’all seen Owen at all? I need—”

“I know exactly what you need, sweetheart.”

Owen.

Against my will, I gasp like a besotted idiot at the sound of his voice. And when Dom steps aside to give me a view of the doorway, I all but break down in tears. His hair is all mussed and somewhere, along the way, he lost his suit jacket. The tie, too, is gone.

I hear Dom, Nick, and Aspen shuffle around and promise to give me a call when I’m discharged. With a look of kindness in her blue eyes, Aspen offers an invite for Owen and me to grab dinner with them before they leave on Friday, if we want.

I want.

But I want to be alone with Owen more.

The door closes behind Nick, and then Owen is walking in, his shoulders hunched, his face set in that familiar brooding scowl of his. My heart gives an unsteady thump of anticipation. I ache to feel his muscled arms around my frame, his sturdy weight pressing into the mattress beside mine.

“I wasn’t sure if the cops had arrested you,” I say, coiling the blanket on the bed between my fingers. “You sort of treated Joe’s face like a trampoline.”

Black eyes dart to my face, to the bruise on my elbow. “Were you lying?” His gaze lifts again, meeting mine with such startling intensity that my entire chest heaves. “When you said that you wrote the email this past Monday?”

Guilt, the fickle, fickle thing, slams into me with riotous force. “I should have told you.”

He sits down on the seat that’s positioned next to the bed, close enough but not close enough to touch.Dammit.“You didn’t, though. Why?”

I swallow, hard. “I didn’t know if it would work, but also . . . I wanted, no, Ineededyou to be surprised if it came out. I didn’t expect Joe to beCelebrity Tea, notat all. That—that was a major shock.”

“That’s not an answer, Savannah.”

Savannah, not Rose.

My skin grows tight as I sit there on the bed. Every part of me feels primed to launch myself at his solid frame and beg for forgiveness. Except right now, as it is, I’m not sure if he would be on board with that. There’s a stillness to his expression, a stiff resolve, that I haven’t seen since I brought him his sketchbook and he kissed me so hard I nearly cracked.

I flatten my palms on the bed, then curl my fingers tight into a fist. “I was scared,” I finally whisper.

His deep baritone answers roughly, “To trust me?”

“That you would leave me, if you knew the truth.” There’s no stopping the tears. I feel them rush forward and I blink, again and again, to try to quell them before they make an appearance. “I-I knew that I needed something monumental forCelebrity Teato find. I had Jorge move the timestamped email into another folder, with the hope that Joe would simply think that he had missed it on the first go-round. But another email talking about me missing you wasn’t going to cut it.” My lungs squeeze at the memory of sitting at my computer and typing up the words that I knew would devastate Owen. Even worse, they could tear us apart.

I stare at the way his knuckles are clenched around the armrests of his chair.

It’s tearing us apart right now.

Air seems harder to find when I continue, “Every word he said is true. My dad did put me in that position, and I felt so torn that”—I swallow down a sob, burying it deep so it won’t completely betray me—“it had come down to that. You told me you don’t want to relive that night again but, Owen, I hung on those moments of you climbing out of that limo formonths. You looked at me like I was someone worth keeping. You asked for my hand, and my stupid brain replayed those seconds where instead I did as you asked, and you got down on one knee.”

My chin quivers and I whip my head to the side because I willnotlet the tears come.

Be fearlessly unapologetic.

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