Page 74 of Chasing You

“What?”

“This place feels like somewhere I could spend a while in.”

“This hospital?” He looks around the room.

“Shut up,” he just grins. “Ruby Cove. I’ve moved around since I can remember, and I don’t even really have a home anymore. But I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else for six weeks than there.More than anything, I just want to be around her, but she doesn’t know that.”

“Then let’s get out of this dreadful place so you can go and fucking tell her!” He picks up my bag and walks straight out the door. I just follow him with a stupid look on my face and butterflies in my tummy.

“But,” he starts up again. “If you fuck her over one more time, just remember how easily you went down in that ring. And know I have Boulder on speed dial.”

I bark out a laugh at that. “Yeah, okay, big man. Let’s go.”

chapter thirty-one

MARINA

PRESENT

I takea step out of the bar and lean my head against the concrete wall, closing my eyes against the twinkle lights that hang between the buildings on this street.

I’ve only been back to work for one day and I’m already tired, and it hasn’t even hit the pm’s yet. The one thing I hate is not being able to do my job, and the stabbing cramps and pounding headache I’ve been fighting for the last two hours are making it difficult today. I’ve tried to put my conversation with the doctor out of my mind, but his voice keeps playing on a loop inside my head.

“Birth control is the most effective way to ease the symptoms.”

“We can work on getting scans done but that may take a while.”

“To the best of our knowledge, going on some form of birth control manages endometriosis the best way possible as of right now. Even after a scan, that will stay the same. It’s your best option.”

I hear the ding of a bicycle bell and my eyes squint open. They catch on a pair of nervous green eyes moving towards me. I close mine again, barely believing who I’m looking at.

Are hallucinations asymptom too?

“I thought you were leaving?” I say, still not opening my eyes. I’ve had missed calls from Miles ever since I ran out of his room yesterday. But I haven’t had the guts to pick up, to hear him tell me all the things he didn’t tell me four years ago. That he’s leaving. I couldn’t handle it, not on top of everything else.

“I know you like to think that you’re never wrong, but itdoeshappen sometimes.” His tone threatens a smile to curve my lips, but I force it down and open my eyes to see Miles standing in front of me, his weight leaning on a deep red painted old school push bike. It’s even got a little basket in the front.

“In the time I spent yesterday staring at the wall while you avoided my calls, I thought about all of the things we never got to do.”

“What is this?”

“It’s one of the things on our list.Go for a ride on Marina’s bike,” he says. “I know we were meant to go on your death machine, but this is a little more my speed at the moment.”

I almost forgot about it, that list we made of things we wanted to do together. Number one being me teaching him how to make brownies, number two being him taking me on a Top Gun flight, and number three being a ride on my motorbike. Of course he remembered.

“I went for red cause, well, you know,” he says sheepishly. God he is so fucking adorable, I hate it.

“When was the last time you rode a bike?” I ask.

“Not since I was seventeen.”

“You haven’t ridden a bike since you were seventeen and you’re going to try now? With one hand to steer?” I nod towards his arm in his sling.

“That’s why you’re in the front,” he raises his eyebrows like it’s a challenge and I have to force myself not to let a smile or a laugh of my own slip free. His energy is contagious, and it’s taking everything in me not to give in to the feelings that swell in my stomach when he’s around me.

I let my eyes roam over him. He’s wearing a worn pair ofcargo shorts and a loose white T-shirt, highlighting the tan he’s picked up since being here. He looks so good casual, nothing like the pilot’s uniform I used to get peeks of when I would see him straight after a flight. He looked fine as hell in that, but in this he looks…comfortable. Like I could lie against him and crinkle up that white shirt and he wouldn’t care one single bit.

My mind throws me back to all those days we spent at his place in Sorrento, lazing around in the sun. Swimming in the huge infinity pool. Doingotherthings in the pool. Remembering the feel of my legs wrapped around his waist, of his strong arms holding me up as he walked us to the bedroom. Of the way we would lay tangled up in each other for entire weekends, acting like a normal couple that were living together. Watching chick flicks on Sunday afternoons, with popcorn and brownies and a packet of candy. It was heaven. I remember thinking nothing could ever change how I felt about Miles. I just never put Miles into that equation.

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