Page 85 of Worlds Collide

“I promised Derek’s mom I’d have brunch with her today,” Hawk tells me with an apologetic wince. “Now I know paparazzi are going to be following me all day,” he grumbles. “So maybe we’ll have brunch at her place.” Suddenly bright as sunshine, he turns to me and goes in for a hug. A long, hard hug. “I really am sorry, CJ.”

“Me too,” I whisper and hug him back. “And I’m sorry about my parents. I’m going to see if I can find anything that my mother’s written on before and?—”

“Wolf said he won’t do anything unless you want him to,” he reminds me as he steps back. The earnest look in his gray eyes has me swallowing hard. There’s only one time Wolf’s eyes looked like that at me, and it was after he met my parents.

Which has me thinking . . .

“Did he tell you about my parents?”

“Not really, just that he met them and that you don’t like them.” Then he smirks devilishly up at me. “He said, and I quote, ‘Those assholes don’t deserve to call CJ son,’ then got even growlier than usual.”

Then why did he leave me right when I needed him the most?

Because despite liking me, despite even feeling protective of me, Wolf doesn’t want tobe with me.So it’s time I let go. For good now.

“I’ll see what I can find and let you know.”

“Okay.” Hawk swallows hard then stands a bit taller. “What are you going to do now? You’ve still got some time before going back to work, right?”

“Yeah.” I sigh as I turn away and run a hand through my hair, then I grab my cup and drink. “I’ll figure something out.”

Suddenly I need to be alone. I need Hawk to leave.

“In any case,” I say with a smile I don’t mean. “Gracie’s sleeping and there shouldn’t be any noise to wake her, otherwise...” I trail off and Hawk nods wisely.

“Dee’s the same,” he whispers. “I’ll get going now. I told Tate I was staying here last night but he’s probably ready to get me somewhere he knows.”

“Right.” I nod and only a few minutes later, I get my wish. I’m completely alone. Yeah, Gracie’s just in the other room, but she won’t wake up for hours.

What the hell am I supposed to do now?

For the next month I find myself discovering a million new things. I download a stupid game to my phone that I quickly become addicted to, and I study a lot so I don’t get fired as soon as I’m back at work. I also spend as much time as I can researching addiction and its only known “cure”—the twelve-step program. I spend hours on the beach just looking at the ocean, watch countless shows, and reread the Harry Potter books—and find out I’m a Huffelpuff. I even recruit Adam’s assistant’s help to find my mother’s handwriting somewhere among the piles of boxes that get delivered to the brownstone once the Dallas house sells in the second week of November.

Turns out my mother loves making albums about events she’s planned—not a single childhood picture of me was found in the fifteen-room mansion, but pictures of charity galas? At least hundreds.

Turns out that in the first page of one of those albums she stuck a note where she explains what the album is... which means we have proof. She even signed it. I text Hawk as soon as I find out, letting him know all about it, and only get a “Great!” in response, which is as anticlimactic as it sounds.

I go to San Francisco for a week when Adam has a game against the Niners, and spend Thanksgiving thinking about what Wolf must be doing that day, and trying to focus on Kevin and Elliott and their exciting plans for the future. Peter pulls me aside and lets me read an early copy of his latest novel, and I love every second I get to spend talking to him about it afterwards.

In all those weeks I don’t get a single call from my parents, just like I don’t get a single call from Wolf—one I annoyingly keep expecting for some stupid reason.

By the time December rolls around, I’m laser focused on the day when I can finally go back to work. Dr. Yang calls and lets me know I’m welcome back on the fourteenth, and I’m beyond ready to get out of my apartment.

But apparently I’m not done with the surprises this year, because just one day before going back to work, I open the door expecting my Chinese takeout, only to find Wolf—holding my takeout.

“The delivery guy gave it to me.” He holds it up like I’m going to need the visuals to understand what he’s talking about.

“Did you tip him?” is the first thing out of my mouth for some reason.

“Of course. Don’t want you to get a bad rep,” he answers automatically with a face that screams “are you crazy?” and all of it just... fuck, it disarms me completely. I hold the door open and nod for him to come in.

I have no idea what he’s doing here or if he just got out of rehab—I have no idea how long the program takes and Hawk definitely didn’t offer up any details about it. I don’t know what I’m going to do if he asks me to try again with him...

I want to, of course I want to be with him, but the way he ran away from me—so many times—is daunting. I don’t want to chasehim forever, and I’m still pretty mad about the way he left me in Como. And let’s be honest, about the fact that he didn’t call me once while he was in rehab.

I would’ve gone to see him. I would’ve helped or—fuck, I don’t know what I could’ve possibly done but I could’vebeenthere. He didn’t let me, he?—

“I came here to apologize.” His voice brings me back to the present. To the surreal picture he makes sitting on the same couch where I’ve spent countless hours, with Chinese takeout containers in front of him. And I’m still standing by the open door.

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