Page 64 of Sawyer
“But things didn’t work out with Paisley,” he shot back. “I wasn’t happy. Maybe I was like Brooke. I’d settled for the wrong person, the wrong kind of life, because I didn’t think anything out there could be better for me.”
She only kept staring, her outer armor coming back up with every heaving breath she took.
“Coming back to Paris, I feel differently. I want to be as happy as the rest of our roommates.”
She bit her lip so hard he was afraid she’d make it bleed. “I want you to be happy too,” she finally said softly. “More than anything. Maybe you should?—”
He slowly started to die because he knew what was coming, and he didn’t think he could take it.
“Get back out there, slugger.” She socked him in the shoulder like she was one of the guys. “You’re a hot, single guy in Paris. You’d have chicks all over you.”
He looked away, because he couldn’t take seeing the desperation in her face as she tried to shove him toward another woman. “Mad, right now I can’t imagine ever wanting anyone but you.”
Her breath shattered, right there in the silent kitchen. “Kyle, I know what I’m asking isn’t great or easy, but if we want to stay best friends and keep our group together—and we agreed we do—then we have to figure out something. I tried with Rico. I can keep trying with other people, but I’m working all the time. You at least could go on a dating app or hang out at a café every morning.”
He had to bite his tongue to keep from playing devil’s advocate. Wouldn’t this only bring up other issues? Not to mention it wouldn’t be fair to whoever they were dating if they were still best friends, seeing each other all the time, and attracted to each other.
His hope for this conversation had seeped away. But he wasn’t a quitter, he reminded himself, and he wasn’t called the Golden Boy for nothing.
“So we keep looking for a solution, then?”
She nodded crisply, tense now. Because she knew she’d pushed him too far.
“Then I’ll see you in the morning,” he told her, making himself flash her a smile as he stood and walked toward the doorway. “Unless you want to catch a late movie?”
She was digging her combat boot into the tile floor when he craned his head over his shoulder to look at her. “Nah, I’mbeat. I’ll…ah…see you in the morning. Maybe I’ll make you Huevos Rancheros. That means Rancher Eggs.”
He slid her a look.
She fidgeted.
“That would be great, Mad.”
Stalking out of the kitchen, he took the stairs two at a time. He’d hoped she’d accept his invitation to the movie. It would have been the easier way. But no.
So it was the hard way, then.
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
You knew you were in love when you took a girl to Charles de Gaulle Airport—at the holidays.
Nightmare. Sawyer nearly shuddered as he maneuvered Kyle’s ride to the parking deck.
“You really don’t need to see me inside to the security checkpoint, Horatio.” Phoebe turned in her seat in her big puffy pink coat, repeating the sentence for the tenth time. “I know you wanted to wait to exchange Christmas gifts until I was literally leaving, but taking me inside seems like one of Hercules’ labors.”
It was worse than that as he waited for a six-person family lugging a truckload of suitcases to move the heck out of the way. “It’s more like a Nordic hero traversing the dangerous forest of Mirkwood.” Or answeringMaybe next yearto his mother’s text about him coming home last minute for the holidays after he’d already told her months agoWe’ll see.God, he hated the passive avoidance routine, but if it wasn’t broke, why fix it?
“Axel would be pleased to hear the reference, but let’s just exchange gifts here. This is too big of a boyfriend duty.”
That was why he was doing it. “Maybe I want to have thatmovie moment where I say goodbye to you in an airport, and we kiss passionately because we know we won’t see each other for a while.”
“I’m barely going to be gone for a week,” she said with a not-so-delicate snort. “Even your roommates think you’re crazy.”
They’d all gone out for drinks last night at a snazzy new jazz lounge Brooke had heard about it. His friends had accepted her, and moreover, they really seemed to enjoy her and her humor.
“My roommates understand a romantic gesture,” he told her, finally swinging into a way too tight space on the umpteenth deck he’d driven through packed with cars. “God, I don’t want to risk this baby being dented, but we need to get you to your flight.”
