Page 29 of Chasing You

I look over to where Wes is sitting beside me, and he’s looking at me with a look I haven’t seen on him before. Sympathy.

“Go on,” he says.

I take a deep breath. “There was a woman behind the bar,” I say, fixing my gaze back on the clouds in front of us. “Her curls were wild, and she had an apron slung haphazardly around her hips. She was talking to an old guy who was sitting on the other side of the bar. Something he said made her laugh, and I was caught. I was stuck, halfway to the bar, I just froze. She was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. The fact that I’d randomly stopped in the middle of the bar must have caught her attention, because she looked over at me and smiled. That had jolted me back into action, I walked embarrassingly fast over to the bar.” I laugh halfheartedly. “I didn’t even catch the game that night. I was too enraptured by her, by the way she moved, and the way she spoke.” I mindlessly shake my head. “I went back there every day after that, for that entire summer, I spent every spare second I had with Marina. Even once Williams cleared me to take on a few flights, I asked to be based out of Sorrento until I was back to full duties. You know my parents, how they see me, being with Marina, I felt like just Miles. Not the golden boy, not the great success, just the guy. I couldn’t shake her, I was so wrapped up in her that I nearly handed in my resignation. I had it typed up and everything.”

“Damn,” Wes says.

“Yeah. It was then, at the end of the summer, that Williams wanted to bring me back full-time, that he wanted to talk to me about my career path, and all of a sudden, it felt like my life rushed back in. That I was in Italy, and I was about to give up everything I’d ever worked for for a woman who lived on the other side of the world. And I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t imagine my life without this job, you know? I had to come back.”

I got so worried about what she would think, or how upset she would be that I just left. I didn’t want to watch her heart break, so I got on my flight back to the states without saying goodbye, and I haven’t seen her since that day.”

Wesley blows out a breath. “Shit. You’re like the nicest guy I know, but that was heartless.”

“I know.” I throw another sour peach in my mouth.

“Damn. That was selfish.”

“I know, Wes.” I rub a hand over my face as if to hide the shame that is written all over it.

He carries on. “You probably broke her heart more that way than if you’d just been honest with her.”

“God, Wes, I know!”

He wearily grabs a sour peach. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” I sigh, my tone apologetic. “I just—seeing her this weekend brought everything back for me.”

“So what happened?”

“She was pissed.”

He scoffs. “As expected.”

I glare sideways at him before my memory drags me back to last night. “I forgot how magnetic she is. Even though she hates my guts, all I wanted to do was be near her. Even though every time she looked at me, it was with disdain, I still wanted her attention on me.”

“You still love her, don’t you?”

That thought has been sending my gut into a spin for the last few days. “I don’t think I ever stopped.”

“You’re fucked.”

“Yup.”

He hands me back the packet of candy. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to fly this plane to Tokyo and drown my sorrows with a night of non alcoholic beers before my flight to L.A. tomorrow.”

“That’ll fix your problems for sure,” he says, focusing his gaze out the window.

I’m highly aware that it will fix approximately zero of my problems, but I’m lost on what to do to make this situation any better. Marina doesn’t want to see me, and here I am, halfway across the world, doing the career that was the sole reason I ran in the first place.

“I need more candy.”

chapter twelve

MARINA

PRESENT

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