There’s a weight inside my chest and I need to get it out. I have a million things I want to say to her, a million things I should have said already, and one apology for being such an asshole and not telling her the truth from the beginning.
“Starla!” calling out her name, I storm through the living room, grabbing the double doors to the bedroom and shoving them open. “Star—”
Standing in the doorway, I see an empty room, with a perfectly made bed, and her suitcase gone. Walking to the dresser, I open all the drawers, but they’re empty.
She’s gone. . .
Running my hand back and forth over my neck, I drag it down my face, and turn in a circle. A sense of loss comes over me, forcing my heart into my throat and my stomach to knot up like rope.
I need to see her.
I’m not ready to just let her run away like this, I can’t. Leaving the room, I don’t even take the time to close the door. I’m not thinking about anything but finding her, holding her, kissing her, and letting her know how much she means to me.
All the things I should have done and said are eating away my brain and strangling my heart, making it hard to focus on anything else. If I don’t get this out, if I don’t tell her every word I have saved inside just for her, I’m not sure I’ll ever be happy again.
“Come on, come on,” I say out loud as I slam the button in the elevator. The doors aren’t closing fast enough, and I don’t have time to stand around and wait.
Lurching off the elevator, I jog to the stairs and take them all the way down to the lobby. After ten flights of stairs, sweat is dripping down my temples, and my heart is racing as I try to catch my breath.
The door clanks shut behind me and I look side to side, hoping to see Starla somewhere in the lobby. People are moving through the room, my eyes are scanning every woman about Starla’s height, or with hair color that is similar, but she’s nowhere to be found.
“Bolt,” Yale’s voice comes in from over my shoulder, so I turn around quickly. His brows crinkle and I know he sees the panic on my face. “You all right? What’s going on? How come you’re down here and not at the reunion?”
“Where is she?”
“Where’s who?”
“Don’t play stupid. Where’s Starla?”
“Her? You’re really down here looking for her?”
Looking past him, I keep searching the lobby, checking all the shadows and corners. “Have you seen her or not? I don’t have time for this shit, Yale, just spit it out.”
“Well, yeah, I’ve seen her, but why does it matter? Didn’t your father tell you to end it with her? I figured that’s why you were with him this morning.”
Veering my stare, my voice bellows deep in the back of my throat. “Where is she, Yale?”
Yale’s jaw jets to the side as the corner of his lip curls down. “She’s gone.”
“What? What the hell do you mean she’s gone? Where’d she go?”
His eyes soften as he looks down at his feet, then back up at me. “She’s on her way home, Bolt, she said she wasn’t going to stay, so I helped her get a taxi to the airport.” The tone in his voice shifts from high to low, and his shoulders start to buckle forward as he sees the anger on my face. “I’m sorry, I assumed you got what you wanted, and you were done with her anyway.”
“You assumed wrong.” My teeth are clenched, my hands are balled into tight fists, and my muscles are starting to shake. I want to hit him, I can feel the adrenaline as it’s coursing through my veins, threatening to take over.
Shaking his head, he holds up his hands. “I thought this was the plan. You said—”
“I know what I said, I know what the plan was, but things can change—shit, things did change.”
“I don’t understand, the whole point—”
Slicing my hand through the air, I take a long step forward, bringing my face to his. “The point is this was wrong—I was wrong, Yale. Do you understand that? I should have never done this to her, I shouldn’t have treated her like this. She didn’t deserve to be made a fool of, she didn’t deserve to be used. Starla is a good person, Yale, and she’s everything I could ever want in a woman.”
Wiping my hands down the sides of my face, I tip my head back and glare at the ceiling. “I just wish I had the chance to tell her I was sorry, to tell her that everything she thought she saw in me, in us—it was all real. Everything she felt and shared with me, I felt it too. It started out as one thing, but it ended with my heart in her hands.”