Page 130 of The One
At the same time?
After fourteen long years of not seeing him?
Why … now?
Oh God.
Before he caught a glimpse of me, I lowered my phone. My hand shook so badly that I almost dropped it.
I held my breath as he got closer.
I turned my face before he reached the side of me and waited for him to pass to carefully gaze forward.
Rhett’s here,was what I kept repeating in my head.
I should look away.
I shouldn’t care.
I should be completely unaffected.
But I couldn’t look away.
I couldn’t stop caring.
I couldn’t help but feel everything.
I took in the way his jeans hugged his thighs, his ass, his waist, and then I looked up to the broadness of his shoulders, the darkness of his hair.
He wasn’t the boy I remembered—that was for sure. What I was looking at now was a man.
My heart.
Why was it pounding so hard? Why was my stomach flipping as though I were circling the loops of a roller coaster?
Why was my mind filling with so many questions?
I watched him until I couldn’t, until he disappeared into the buzzing of Bangkok.
And the moment he was gone, when I could no longer see even a stitch of his black hair, I felt this overwhelming loss.
An emptiness, similar to the one I’d felt on the plane ride from LA to Spain.
A feeling that had never gone away.
But that feeling had changed over the years, sometimes by the day, like it was a tide. The depth rising and falling, where some moments would feel endlessly hollow and others only toe deep.
Today, I was hitting the bottom.
Why?
What am I missing?
Is it love?
LA?
Or is it Rhett Cole?
