Page 84 of Petals and Plot Twists
My heart starts hammering in my chest. Sophie is here? In Charlotte?
“Please send her up,” I say. “Right away.”
“All right,” Joni says. “Room five forty-two,” she says, presumably to Sophie, then back to me, she adds, “She’s on her way.”
I make fast work of stripping off my dress shirt and pulling a t-shirt over my head. I think about changing out of my dress pants, but I’m too anxious to see Sophie, so I forget about my mismatched outfit and grab my room key before heading into the hallway and hurrying toward the elevators.
It takes about ten seconds for the elevator to stop on my floor with a ding that makes my heart climb into my throat. I don’t know why Sophie is here, but right now, in this moment, there’s nothing that I want more than to see her.
When the elevator doors slide open and Sophie sees me, her expression brightens before she offers me a sheepish smile. “Hi, Peter.”
I shake my head, blinking once, twice, because I have to be dreaming. Sophie looks beautiful enough to make my chest ache just from looking at her. She’s more dressed up than I usually see her, wearing black pants and heels and a white blazer over a shimmery green top. She looks polished and professional and not like she just got off an airplane. Her hair is down, curls framing her face, and I know, with sudden clarity, that if I have the opportunity to spend the rest of my life with this woman, I’ll take it no matter where I have to live to do it.
I stand there staring, unmoving, long enough that the elevator doors start to close, pausing my racing thoughts and jolting me back into the moment. I lunge forward, sticking my arm into the doors to keep them from closing and gesture her off the elevator.
“You’re here,” I say, once we’re both on the same side of the doors. “How are you here?”
She shrugs. “I needed to see you.”
It’s all I can do not to pull her into a hug, but the look on her face keeps me from doing it. She looks nervous, a little trepidatious, like she has to say something really important and she doesn’t know where to start.
“Can we hug?” she asks, like she’s reading my thoughts. “I really want to hug.”
I let out a little chuckle, opening my arms as she steps into my embrace, her arms wrapping around my waist. She sighs as she presses her cheek to my chest.
I lean down, nose to her hair, and breathe in a lungful of Sophie-scented air.
“I missed you,” she says, her voice soft.
“Yeah, I missed you too.” It feels so good to hold her like this, and I soak it in, trying not to stress too much about why she’s here or what she’s going to tell me. Because there must be something if she came all this way. “How did you find me?”
“An educated guess,” she says. “IronKey is right next door. I figured they’d put you up somewhere close. Though I wasn’t sure Joni was going to cave,” she says, arms tightening around my waist. “She didnotwant to tell me your room number.”
“Come on,” I say, reaching for her suitcase. “It’s not far to my room.”
She follows behind me as we cover the short distance down the hall. I pull the key out of my pocket and unlock the door, then hold it open for her as she makes her way inside.
I leave her suitcase by the wall, and she shrugs out of the bag she’s wearing on her back, setting it down on top of the dresser. Then we just stare at each other, the silence heavy between us.
I want to ask so many questions—and she probably has questions too, but it’s hard to know where to start.
“Do you want to sit?” I finally ask, motioning toward the king-sized bed.
“Sure,” she says. She sits on one corner of the bed, while I sit on the other. I spend too long wondering if I should have taken the chair by the window, avoided the awkwardness of us both sitting on the bed.
It’s a stupid thought though because it wasn’t that long ago that wesleptin the same bed, the night Reggie scared Sophie into needing my company.
Finally, Sophie closes her eyes, face scrunched. “Peter, why does this feel so awkward?” she asks, squinting one eye open and looking at me.
“Should I have taken the chair?” I say, quickly standing. “I can?—”
She grabs my arm as I move past her, stopping my progress. “You don’t need to sit in the chair,” she says with a chuckle. “It’s just me.” She tugs me down on the bed so I’m sitting directly beside her. “I think I’m just nervous,” she says. She threads her fingers through mine, giving my hands a squeeze. “I spent the entire flight rehearsing what I was going to say and how I was going to say it, and now everything is gone. All my words.” She lifts her free hand and makes an exploding gesture with her fist, opening it and spreading her fingers wide. “Poof,” she says. “Just like that.”
“Take your time,” I say. “I don’t have anywhere I need to be.”
She finally looks over and smiles at me, her eyes so full of warmth, oflove,I feel a sudden, driving need to kiss her. I won’t though. Not until I know why she’s here. Until I know she wants me to.
“How has it been this week?” she asks.
