Page 59 of Accidental Mile High Daddy
But here, in the dark, my face buried in the pillow and the covers pulled too tight around me like they could somehow hold the pieces of me together, I let all of it sink in.
And I hated myself.
For falling again. For being so simple to crack. For believing so easily, that maybe I wasn’t just a temporary comfort or an easy tool for him to play against Ryan.
I should have known better. Ididknow better, and I still let it happen, still let him in, still let him touch me like it meant something to both of us, tohim.
A sob slipped out before I could stop it. Then another. And another.
I cried until my throat stung, until my chest ached, until I’d gone well past the gasping, shuddered breaths and the snot and the feeling like I was dying, until I had nothing left to give and my head pounded, until I could barely remember what it felt like to believe that things could go right.
But even through the tears, a stupid, angering thought remained, so latched on what I couldn’t scrub it off if I tried.What if it was real?
What if that first look in the first-class lounge, that first spark, the broken crystal and the banter and the way he’d spoken to me like I was interesting—what ifthatwas some kind of insane, idiotic, love-at-first-sight nonsense?
Instant. Illogical. All-consuming, sticking around for far too long when and where it shouldn’t.
If that’s what this was, if that’s what I’d fallen into, then this was so much worse. Worse than Ryan, worse than Lauren, worse than any betrayal that had come before. Because I’d let this happen to myself.
I hadn’t turned it off when I should have.
I’d let myself believe in him. I’d let myself believe I couldhave him.
I knew better now. But it didn’t make it hurt any less.
Chapter 18
Sienna
Two months later…
Itried to forget him. Christ, I tried.
I deleted his number. I archived every text, tossed the dresses I’d worn the three nights in Tulum into the back of my closet like they might destroy me if I saw them. He reached out — three times exactly. A text, and two calls, leaving one voicemail that wasn’t even a message, just silence before a click.
It didn’t matter. I didn’t respond.
I knew what would happen if I did, knew I’d fall right back into his gravity, knew I’d be too goddamn stupid to pull myself out of it.
So instead, I just kept going. Kept living my life, finished out the last couple of weeks of the school year like a zombie, threw myself into prep for next year’s students the second the bell rang on the last day. I tried. Itriedto ignore the aching in my chest and the twisting in my gut anytime I thought about him.
Except the twisting got worse.
It wasn’t as bad at first. I blamed him, blamed the humid Atlanta heat getting to me, blamed the end-of-the-school-year stress, the long days, and too little sleep. But then it wasn’tjusttwisting. It morphed, turning into nausea and bone-deep fatigue, stress that had built so high I would snap at the smallestthings and then cry over it two minutes later because I felt too overwhelmed to handle it. I barely made it into summer break, and when I flaked on Jules for the third time in two weeks, she showed up at my door unannounced, with coffee, and onlyslightlyannoyed.
“You’re clearly not okay,” she’d said, sitting sideways on the couch beside me, her iced latte sweating in her grasp. “You look like you’ve been hit by a bus.”
I’d glared at her as I sucked my iced americano through the soggy paper straw. “Wow. Thanks.”
“I’m serious, Si,” she’d murmured, her deeply tanned, manicured hand resting gently on my knee. I’d winced at the nickname — she didn’t use it often, but Ryan had used it constantly. God, evenRyanhurt to think about nowadays. “You’ve been off for a month. Maybe longer. I’ve barely seen you, and the last time we went out, you cried when you saw a golden retriever.”
“He looked like the one I had when I was a kid,” I’d retorted, steeling my jaw.
She didn’t push it again that day. She’d stayed with me for a few hours, watched a couple of episodes of some terrible reality show that she swore was the best thing on television, and made me promise to go with her to get classroom supplies for the new school year a few days later.
But when I’d opened the door for her that morning, my face sheet white and my stomach uncooperative, my brain fuzzy and my head pounding from throwing up three times already that morning, she didn’t give me a choice.
“Urgent care,” she said, grabbing my purse from the kitchen counter and pushing me out the door, an unused cooking pot in one hand.
