Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 128260 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 641(@200wpm)___ 513(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128260 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 641(@200wpm)___ 513(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
What’s so vital that you can’t borrow it from Audrey or Julia, or pick it up at the mall?
It didn’t help that I had tossed and turned all night, sleep evasive, those glittering lights lulling me into mindlessness, but not enough to drift off. I was overtired, that had to be it.
Plus, I was just a little nervous about this trip. Alex had only met my family once, when they came to Vegas after I’d first moved there. We had just started dating at that point and we all went out to dinner. So this was a chance for Alex to really get to know them better. Which was good…right?
We had an hour layover before our next flight to Dayton, and so we decided to get a bite to eat at one of the restaurants near our boarding gate.
We stepped onto an escalator and started descending and I glanced over at the people traveling upward, an old woman catching my eye. I’ve seen you before. She smiled at me and winked. I blinked, something so familiar about her… I craned my neck as she moved upward and away from me, but she didn’t look back.
As we traveled through the airport, we passed a little girl sketching in a notebook. Just as we walked by her, she smiled and held it up to her mother who was standing in front of her. I turned my head to see what it was and time slowed, my heart constricting as I saw the delicate, little, yellow flower she had drawn. It looked like a… I snapped my head forward, time resuming as I kept moving.
When we got to the terminal where our gate would be boarding, we sat down at a table in a food court, and Alex went to place an order at an eatery that served soup and sandwiches.
As I sat there waiting for him, I looked around. A man sitting at a table near the entrance, with his back to me, caught my eye. Short, dark-blond hair and broad, muscular shoulders. My heart rate picked up and I sucked in a breath. Carson? It couldn’t be. How? I started to stand, just as he did too, and air lodged in my chest. As he turned toward me, deep disappointment hit me and I sank down in my chair, deflating. It wasn’t him.
You know what you left behind, don’t you, Grace?
You know what’s missing… what’s been missing all these years.
My hand gripped the table edge. I stared straight ahead for several minutes, the truth of what I was feeling washing over me. Oh God… It hit me, sitting right in the middle of a food court in the Atlanta airport. It was Carson I was missing. It was Carson I was wanting. Carson. The one who made me feel out of control in so many ways—the one who was anything but safe.
Realization dawned like the first light of sunrise bursting over the horizon. It hadn’t been our time so many years ago in Vegas. We’d still had things to accomplish, growing to do. But… we’d been given a second chance. Now.
Take it. Hold on tight. Don’t let him go this time.
My eyes moved to Alex standing at the counter waiting for our order. Alex. Oh, Alex. I had chosen him because he was almost the exact opposite of Carson. And I had been afraid that if I didn’t choose someone who was blatantly different in every way, that I would always compare the man I ended up with to the man I really wanted. I released a breath of regret. I’d made a mistake. A big one. Not one that was only going to hurt me, but one that was going to hurt Alex too. But I owed it to him… I owed it to him to tell him the truth before he wasted one more second with a woman who didn’t love him enough. I hadn’t done it with realization or malice, but the truth was, I’d treated him like a consolation prize. Alex and I should have just been friends all along.
Call it off.
Alex turned and headed my way, a tray of food and two water bottles in his hands.
He sat down and started doling out the order.
“Alex,” I said, reaching across the table and taking his hand. He stopped moving, looking down at it in surprise.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, obviously having heard the seriousness in my tone.
“Do you love me, Alex?”
He gave me a small, confused smile. “Of course I do. You know that.”
I closed my eyes momentarily, giving my head a shake. “No, I mean, do you feel passionate about me?”
He let out a short laugh, pulled his hand away and uncapped his water bottle. “I’m not the most passionate person, Grace. You know that.”
Right. He was far too rational for passion. Only…“I don’t think that’s true,” I said.