Page 9 of Stay for Me
There’s nothing in the world that could make me stay.
So, I give her my signature grin. “Hopefully, we’ll turn it around for him.”
“I hope so too.”
Chapter Three
Brenna
“So, you met him, and you feltnothing?” Cybil asks on the screen, pulling her long blonde hair to the side.
I hate that she demands all our calls be video. It’s really inconvenient not to be able to hide my face.
“What does that mean?”
She laughs. “I mean, is the man as beautiful in person as he is on television, darling? You can’t tell me that you didn’t look.”
“Sure. I guess. He isn’t ugly if that’s what you’re asking.”
I fight back a smile as I think of him. In the handful of minutes I spent with him, he made me feel things I haven’t in a while. My cheeks were heating with warmth as though I were sixteen again. I found myself oddly nervous but also giddy because of the way he looked at me—like a woman. A woman who was in front of a man, not the widow who lost her husband in a horrible plane crash.
It was a herculean effort to get in the car and not stay, talk, relish in the attention. Even though there was a wave of guilt so deep that it almost drowned me. It’s too soon to think of another man, even if it were just a skin-deep attraction.
I feel as though I’m betraying Luke, which is stupid, but I can’t help it.
The tears wouldn’t cease that night, looking at photos of Luke and me, scrolling through his Facebook account and seeing the photos of him and his friends smiling. It made me hate that I thought about another man.
The psychologist in me was raging at the feelings I knew were ridiculous. If a client were sitting in front of me, I would’ve told them that feelings were just that, and sometimes we needed them. That it reminded us that life went on, people moved forward. Yet, I would’ve wanted to slap myself if I had heard that during my—feelings.
Her laughter gets louder. “Oh, honey, you should see your face. My daddy would’ve said, ‘Sugar, you look like you swallowed a bee.’”
Cybil has no lack of things her daddy would’ve said, but this one has me stumped. “Swallowed a bee?”
“Yeah, you know, like your face is pinched because you’re trying hard to make it look like you didn’t just eat a bug.”
I have no idea what the hell she means.
“No one knows what the hell your daddy was saying, sweetheart. I don’t even think he knew. He made shit up as he went,” Reggie says a second before his dark, handsome face comes on the screen. “Hi, Brenna.”
“Reggie! My favorite husband.”
“You know it,” he jokes back. “You look good, getting tan?”
“Tan? Are you crazy? I don’t tan—I burn.”
“Well, that’s a problem I don’t have to worry about.”
I smile and tilt my head. “And I am envious.”
Reggie grabs the phone from Cybil and flops on the bed so I can get a good look at him. His hair is shaved lower than usual, and his deep brown eyes look mischievous. Reggie is one of the most handsome men I’ve ever met, which isn’t something I would tell him since he’d use it later on. He grins. “Look how lucky I am. I have two beautiful women in bed with me right now.”
“You’re stupid.”
“You love me,” he counters.
“I do.”
I love that he has never treated me with kid gloves. He was Luke’s best friend. They were in the same boot camp class, went to flight school together, and then had the same first duty station. Cybil, Reggie, Luke, and I were our own unit, and she and I never had to worry because we knew they had each other’s backs.
