Winning Hollywood's Goodest Girl

I move in his direction slowly, stopping across from him with my belly to the counter. I feel sore, but I also feel good. He did such a good job taking care of me, and he didn’t even know how much he needed to.

I glance at the clock behind him, but his eyes never leave me. I can feel the weight of them all the way down to my bones.

“I really should be going,” I say. I’ve been gone without a word or a mode of contact for the last ten hours. I’ll be surprised if Heidi hasn’t opened a case with the FBI.

He smiles sadly as my eyes find his again. “In the interest of full disclosure, I don’t want you to.”

My heart flutters in my chest, and I have to lift a hand to the flesh over top of it to settle it.

“Harrison.”

His smile grows then, and he flashes a wink as he rounds the counter.

“It’s okay. Don’t even give it a second thought.”

I nod around a dry, uncomfortable swallow. It feels wrong to leave, but I know I have no other option.

His scent is overwhelming as he pulls me into a hug and turns my face to fit it in the crook of his neck. I hug back with all my strength, taking in all of him through every sense I can. I want it to last.

Harrison’s lips linger on the skin of my cheek long after he pulls away. I pull farther away in an attempt to numb my still tingling nerve endings, but the effort is very nearly futile.

“It was good to see you, Rock.”

I laugh at his bizarrely apt understatement. “Yeah, it was…good.”

“Great,” he counters then, the dimple in his cheek sinking all the way in and practically creating a neon arrow pointing to his sparkly green eyes. “Amazing, actually, if I’m being accurate.”

I shake my head, but a smile of my own settles deep into the features of my own face.

“So…” I giggle. “I guess I’ll see you in another twenty-five years?”

“Let’s shoot for ten or less,” he replies with a wink.

I smile. “Sounds like a deal.”

“Where will I find you?” he asks, and my throat closes up around a lie I can’t help but deliver.

“I don’t know.”

He nods slowly, and I feel each bow of his head all the way to the tips of my toes. “Well…” he says, holding both of his arms up to the apartment around us. “That’s okay. Because you can always find me in New York.”

Raquel

Just call my heart Elvis, because she’s left the building.

When I wake up the next morning from what feels more like a coma than sleep, I feel hollow inside. Like the crying jag that I maintained even during my sleep-fueled dreams has drained every last organ right out of me.

My heart? Shriveled. Nonexistent. Drained of all its blood.

My head, however, pounds with more pressure than seems physically sustainable. It hurts behind my eyes, in my temples, around the edges of my jaw—fucking everywhere.

I pick up my phone again and hit the contact I’ve practically glued to my thumb overnight, but the result is still the same. “We’re sorry, but the number you’ve dialed is—”

“Goddammit!” I scream, throwing the phone to the floor and praying it will shatter.

It doesn’t. Because even simple blessings are apparently working against me.

Frustrated, I pick it up with an angry swipe of my hand and flip it over. But my throw has performed some tasks, opening up my messages somehow, and there, in my recent thread, is a message from Caplin Hawkins telling me not to make a birth plan because he’s already made plans of his own—speaking as my unborn child, of course.

Without giving myself the chance to chicken out, I open the message and start typing as fast as I can. I’m angry, that much is apparent, and if I can’t get in touch with Harrison directly, I just want someone to know.

Me: Tell your friend that if he was going to change his number, he could have at least had the decency to talk to me in person first.

Cap: Um…what?

I practically yell as I’m typing, I’m so fucking annoyed by his innocent act. These guys gossip as much as a group of high school girls. There’s no way Harrison didn’t tell at least one of them what was going on so it could spread to the group like a rash.

Me: Harrison! We had a fight! That doesn’t give him the right to drop off the face of the planet like we never even existed! Changing his number?! That’s the lowest, scummiest, most horrible move possible.

Cap: I can tell you’re upset, honey, so I hope you know I say this with love…but you’ve completely lost your fucking cookies. Whore-i-son’s number hasn’t changed since the day I met him, and it sure as shit hasn’t changed today. I just talked to him this morning, the melancholy little fucker. And HE’S walking around acting like you devastated HIM. So, maybe you need to take another look at what’s going on. Respectfully.