Page 6 of That Reunited Feeling

“Ha. You itching to book your flights?” She blows out a loud breath. “I hope so. Because I am itching to have you here.”

“Kind of…” Even I can hear the crack in my voice.

“That doesn’t sound good. What’s up?”

I clutch the jeans to my chest and slump against the wall. “You won’t believe who I just bumped into.”

“Surprise me.” She pants like a woman in labor. “I’m almost at the top of this fucking hill.”

“Tom.”

Her breathing stops. “You’re shitting me? Where?”

“Here. At the house.”

“I thought you said he hardly ever visits.”

“He doesn’t. And he was just over for Max’s wedding.”

“That’s weird then, right?” Rachel is ever the analyzer. “I mean, if he doesn’t come back much, why would he visit twice in quick succession?”

She’s right. The weirdness factor hadn’t occurred to me amid the shock. And the sweating. And the clenched gut. And the need to get the holy fucking hell out of here.

“Did you see his wife?” Rachel asks.

My stomach does one giant somersault. Shit. “No.”

My brain’s so addled by Naked Tom it hadn’t even occurred to me she might have been behind the bedroom door.

Heart racing, blood turning the temperature of an Arctic explorer’s extremities, I hold the phone against my ear with my shoulder and use both hands to resume yanking as many items of clothing off hangers as I can.

“I have to get out of here, Rach.” The words only just make it out of my tightening throat. I toss the clothes into the case without folding them, spin around and open another drawer, then another, my whirling brain unable to focus on what to grab next.

Seeing Tom has sent the bottom crashing out of my world. And now I feel like I’m tumbling down the rabbit hole like Alice, with no clue where I’m going to land.

“Hey, you’ll be fine,” Rachel says in the voice I imagine she uses when she tells parents terrible news about their kids’ health.

A male voice near her shouts, “Hey. You finished with that bike, or what?”

“Christ, are you at the gym?” Socks, underwear, I gather it all up. “God, sorry. I thought you were on your bike at home.” And drop it in the smaller case.

“Nope. The sale went through on the old place. Dev and I are in a hotel till the new house is ready.”

Shit. I can’t even ask to set up camp in their spare room. My heart drops to my belly, and both organs take a nosedive to my feet.

“You’ll be fine, Han.”

A sadistic creature is jabbing needles into the backs of my eyes while trying to inflate a beach ball in my throat.

I drop onto the bed between the two suitcases. “I don’t know how.” I sound pathetic. Like I’m sixteen and crying about him leaving all over again.

“You’re both adults now. Different people. Just be nice to him. Don’t yell.”

“Too late.”

“You already yelled at him? Told him he was an ass for vanishing to London?”

“Yup.”

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