Page 64 of So This Is Love

Zara turns to me, rolls her eyes and speaks loudly. “A pain in my ass. I’ll tell you about it later.”

She pulls me into a quick hug goodbye before walking over to the mystery man.

22

Laila

Sonny

Are you working from home or in the office today?

me

The office

sonny

If you aren’t busy, I have something for you.

Back door.

I shut my laptop and stand from my desk, walking quickly to the back door of our office. I open the door and standing there with a beautiful bouquet of pink roses is Bryce. I can’t stop the grin that instantly comes to my face.

“Wow these are beautiful,” I say, taking the flowers from him.

I step back to let him step inside the building and we walk together back to my desk. I set the flowers down next to my laptop.

“You didn’t think I forgot did you?”

Like clockwork, as my previous flowers started to brown and wilt, the delivery man would arrive with new ones to replace them. Every. Single. Time. Since the first time he bought me flowers.

“No,” I say. “We’ve just both been very busy and we haven’t seen each other in a minute, so I would have understood if you were too busy.”

“You know you don’t have to do that right?”

“Do what?”

Bryce takes my hand and rubs the back of my hand with his thumb. “Lower your expectations of other people.”

“Easier said than done,” I reply. “Sometimes giving other people the power to let you down leaves you as the one with hurt feelings.”

Bryce cocks his head to the side and looks at me intensely. I can tell he wants me to elaborate on the little piece of my trauma that I just shared. Before he can respond, I change the subject. “I thought you were going to be in the studio all day today.”

“I am, we made a lot of progress today cleaning things up and putting finishing touches on the album. I just needed a little bit of a break. Also like you said, I haven’t seen you in a minute so I thought I’d bring you your flowers before I head back.”

“Thank you,” I say. “Does that finally mean I can get a little sneak peek?”

Bryce has spent hours and hours in the studio working on the album, but he’s kept it very close to his chest and hasn’t shared any of it with me.

“Maybe,” he says, an amused look on his face.

I take it as a victory because everything before this has been a hard no. He hasn’t wanted to share anything about the project yet, the whole thing just between him and Blue.

“What you got going on today?” Bryce asks.

“Actually,” I say, grabbing my laptop. “I just finished editing some of the spreads from our photoshoot and was going to send them over to Morgan for approval.”

I flip the computer around to show Bryce the things I’ve been working on. He scrolls through the photos and graphics.

---