Page 30 of Gamble
Reagan felt like an idiot. Of course, he had friends she was taking him away from. Elijah must have expected what she was going to say because he added an explanation. “Kind of like how your boyfriend planned the trip and then made plans you hated, my buddies got me here and then planned a bunch of excursions I couldn’t go on.”
Curious, she asked. “What kind of excursions?”
Glancing at his watch, he answered, “Right about now, they’re jumping out of a perfectly good airplane where they’ll drop into some rough terrain and have to climb and hike their way out of. Then later, they’ll be racing ATVs in sand dunes.”
“Oh no! You should have told me. I never wanted to make you miss going with them.” Her level of disappointment at the thought of canceling their planned day was telling.
That sexy smile, which she was getting used to, slipped a bit. “I wasn’t going to go with them, regardless. I’ve done all of those things in the past.”
Elijah paused long enough that she thought he’d finished his thought. Then he added, “I’ve been hard on my body. I will not risk further injury doing something stupid at this point in my life.”
While she felt selfish for being happy Elijah hadn’t gone with them, she still added, “Well, that was pretty shitty of them ditching you when it’s your birthday trip.”
“Naw. I don’t blame them. Two of the guys are married with kids. This is a fun getaway for them.”
He retrieved a cold water from the fridge and handed it to her before adding, “I need a couple of minutes to make some calls. Make yourself at home. Freshen up if you’d like,” he said, waving in the direction of another room.
Reagan pulled her makeup bag from her suitcase, grateful to have a few minutes alone in Elijah’s massive bathroom.
As soon as the door was closed, she started pacing back and forth in the spacious opulence, thinking through all that had happened in the last twenty-four hours. Elijah’s kindness aside, she’d ended a relationship she’d hoped would be the one. Her forever. Tristan was supposed to be the man she’d grow old with. The man who would be the father of the children she wanted to have one day. And considering she’d turn thirty in a few months, she felt the pressure of one day getting closer.
Glancing up, Reagan took stock of her reflection in the massive mirror. The woman staring back at her felt like a stranger. Shedding Tristan had exposed old wounds. For the first time in a long time, she saw her old self. The version of herself she’d been so proud of at one point in her life. The strong woman she’d been trying to subdue as she’d attempted to morph into a watered-down version of herself more palatable to the men she’d let into her life.
For once, she refused to let herself off the hook for her naivety. For her dreaming and misplaced hopes in a man who could barely take care of himself, let alone her and even children. One of her favorite podcasters she listened to loved to say, ‘When people show you who they are, believe them.’ Well, Tristan has shown his true colors again and again, but she hadn’t wanted to see the truth.
Today felt like brutal honesty time. She finally saw him for what he was. Self-centered and superficial. Sexy, yes.Handsome, definitely. Fun-loving, too much. He wouldn’t be settling down anytime soon, if ever.
Where did that leave her?
On the one hand, it put her back at square one, at least in the romance department. But looking at her reflection, she acknowledged that was okay. She’d taken the wrong path when she’d put her trust in Tristan. She could see that now. The relief she felt at being able to reset herself back to the fork in the road where she’d started trying to change for all the wrong reasons was telling.
The only good thing her relationship with Tristan had done was it had gotten her off her butt to move to L.A. where she had an exciting and fulfilling job at a world-renowned hospital. Los Angeles, where her best friend lived and where she could see herself settling down. The problem was she couldn’t afford to live in the over-priced Southern California market. Not alone anyway.
That meant she’d either need to high-tail it back to Washington State where she could move back in with her parents while she saved for a down-payment on her own house, or she’d have to find a new roommate in Los Angeles once Meena and Asher got married in a few months.
“You don’t need to decide this today,” she said to the woman in the mirror, feeling a calmness she hadn’t thought she could tap into this soon after walking out of Tristan’s life.
Her phone ringing drew her out of her deep thoughts.
“Hi there,” she answered, suspecting why Meena was calling.
“What’s going on? Who is Elijah Keaton?”
Smiling at the woman in the mirror, Reagan tried to find the right words for explaining all that had happened that morning.
“The man I had breakfast with.”
“Okay. Why didn’t you have breakfast with Tristan?”
“Because I don’t like to have meals with my ex-boyfriends.”
“You did it.”
Reagan didn’t take offense at the relief she heard in her best friend’s voice. Meena hadn’t tried to hide that she thought Reagan could do better than Tristan Goodrich.
“I did.”
“You don’t sound very upset,” Meena observed correctly.
