Hurricane Hearts (Storm MC Reloaded 1)
Me: God, today has been awful. Are you free for a call?
Cleo: Yeah, gimme five.
* * *
I swiped the room key up and exited the room. Five minutes later, I was in a big comfy chair in the hotel lobby, waiting for Cleo to answer my call.
“Hey, babe,” she said, sounding as exhausted as I felt.
“Hey, you. Are you okay? You sound tired.”
“I’m a little tired, but I’m good. I have ten minutes before my next client, so tell me everything.”
I frowned. “You’re working late today.” Cleo usually saw her last patient much earlier in the day.
“Yes. Now talk, because we’re losing time here the more you talk about other stuff.”
I sighed and caught her up on everything that happened today. She listened quietly, and when I finished, she said, “I’m sorry this is so hard, Birdie, but you guys are going to get through it. You know that, right?”
“I want to say yes, but honestly, I’m just not sure. Winter looks at me sometimes like he doesn’t even know me.”
“And the other times?”
“The other times, what?” I was confused by her question.
“How does he look at you when he’s not looking at you like that?”
“A lot of the time he doesn’t even look at me, but then when he does, it’s with this intense, fierce stare. I think it’s his grief when he does that… maybe…. God, I don’t know anymore. I can’t read him at the moment.”
“Babe,” she said softly, “you’d know if it was grief. I know that Winter intensity, and it means he is far from giving up on you. I hate to give you this advice, because I know how bad you are at it, but you need to be patient.”
She was right; I knew she was, but knowing it didn’t ease my inner turmoil.
“Shit,” Cleo said as I mulled over her advice. “I have to go in a minute, but tell me what the plan is for tonight.”
“I don’t know if we have a plan. I mean, Winter hasn’t said anything, and I’ve been so busy giving him space today that I didn’t ask.”
“Okay, well call if you need me. I’ll be home after seven.”
“Thanks, babe. I love you.”
“Love you, too,” she said before ending the call.
I placed my phone on my lap, closed my eyes, and rested my head back against the couch. Taking a deep breath, I focused on clearing my mind and calming the anxiousness that filled me. I spent a good ten minutes doing that, and when I headed back to the lift, I felt a little more able to deal with whatever happened when I got back to the room.
I was wrong, though, because when I reached my destination, I found Winter on the phone making plans to meet someone in the lobby in half an hour.
Not what I’d expected, it flared all my emotions again. Somehow, I managed to keep them all on the inside.
Winter dropped his phone on the bed and looked at me. “Max is coming over.”
“You’re going out with him?”
“Yeah. He wants to do dinner. Catch up some more now that we’ve cleared the air and gotten through today.”
My heart sunk, but I understood this wasn’t him shutting me out. This was him being with his brother. “That sounds like a good idea,” I said, my voice betraying everything I felt.
“Birdie,” he started, eyeing me with that intensity again, “the dinner invite includes you.”