Page 75 of The Mistakes I've Made
But I’d wanted this promotion, this freedom, so I could finally do all the things I’d only dreamed of.
I’d been living inside for far too long.
Hell, I’d barely been living at all up until now.
It was time for all that to change.
It was time for this life of mine to begin.
Finally finding the confidence I needed, I pushed open the car door and went for it. I walked toward that front door, thankful for Molly and her meddling. She’d not only supplied me with an ample pep talk, complete with homemade baked goods that I’d totally devoured and the car that had gotten me here, but she’d also supplied me with Taylor’s address, something I hadn’t known until tonight.
Standing at his doorway now, I could see him everywhere—from the well-kept entryway that boasted several potted plants to the weathered plaque on the door that proudly displayed his last name.
Smiling, I wondered if it, too, came with its own history lesson.
There was only one way to find out.
So, I knocked on the door.
And I waited and waited.
And, finally, when that front door creaked open, I found myself face-to-face with someone I hadn’t expected.
“Sierra,” I said, trying to sound pleasant even though my spirit was being crushed by her very presence.
The smile on her face, the carefree one she’d answered the door with, faltered. “Lani,” she replied.
How did she know that nickname?
“Who’s at the door?” Taylor’s voice made my body freeze in place when all I wanted to do was run.
“This isn’t what it looks like,” Sierra said.
And, for a moment, I believed her. For a moment, I thought I felt a connection, a brief flash of something that felt like friendship—or at least, the beginning of it—but then my gaze flickered past hers, and I saw Taylor standing at the foot of the stairs, his eyes telling me everything I needed to know.
“It was stupid of me to assume you weren’t busy,” I said, my words fumbling over one another like dominoes. Kind of ironic because that was exactly how my life felt right that second.
My foot took a step back, and I saw Taylor’s take one step forward.
“Leilani.”
I waited for him to finish, to beg me not to go, but his wide eyes and silence seemed to drag on endlessly.
I guessed there was nothing else to say.
I’d misinterpreted the signs.
I’d turned harmless flirting into something it wasn’t, and now, here I was, ready to open my heart to someone who was clearly interested in someone else.
I was a fool.
A fool who was about to cry.
So before that happened, I willed my body into motion and turned back down that walkway, back to the car that had seemed so difficult to get out of just moments earlier, and then I drove away.
I drove away from Taylor and the girl he’d called nothing more than a friend, and I drove to the only safe place on the island.
My crappy hotel.
