Page 20 of The Love Dare
Alex simply drops his head to the counter and laughs.
Tyler implodes.
Years of pent-up emotions detonate in an instant. Every chance he didn’t take, every opportunity he missed gets swallowed up in the blast, adding fuel to the fire. It’s a wonder he doesn’t stumble back from the force. Instead, he’s eerily still, the only frozen one amid a frenzy of questions and comments. He doesn’t hear what they’re saying. He’s in the room, but not, lost in the mushroom cloud of his own making, fighting to find a way through the debris. But there isn’t one. As the emptiness sinks into his bones, three words flash, made somehow clearer by the devastation.
I’m too late.
If there was ever a chance for them, it’s gone now. Maybe if he told her earlier in the semester, or over the summer, or last year, or during any number of the times they’ve hung out together, maybe then it might be different. But he didn’t. So she never knew.
And now she’s leaving.
Maybe I?—
He quenches the idea before he even has the chance to really think it. Because it’s not just that she’s leaving. It’s that, while he stares at her, completely gobsmacked, feeling as though his world is crumbling, Winnie iselated. She beams. He’s never seen her so excited in all the years that he’s known her. She rambles on and on about the art department, the English department, the culture in the city, the internship opportunities, and a million other things he can tell she’s been dreaming about for far longer than this sudden announcement might reveal.
She wants this.
She really,reallywants this.
And he won’t be the one to ruin it. To ruin everything. If she felt the same way he does, she would have never applied to NYU in the first place. Or maybe she would have, and this has absolutely nothing to do with him, but even in that scenario,there’s no recourse. She’ll be moving across the country in a few months, starting a new life. In two years, he’ll be playing professional hockey. Long distance is one of those things that’s great in theory, but never works out. Trying something now would be worse than not trying at all. At least if he stays silent, she’ll still be in his life. He’ll still have Alex, and the Rusu family. Yes, he’ll want to die inside every time he sees her, but that’s nothing new. And it’s better than the alternative—losing them all.
Winnie’s hazel eyes meet his.
That electric charge between them sizzles. He wants to live in that burn, to let it build and buzz and become something so intense she’ll have no chance but to acknowledge it. Instead, he wraps his hand around the wire and unplugs.
“I’m happy for you,” he says, willing his tone to remain neutral.
Disappointment flashes across her features, gone in a blink, so fast he’s sure he imagined it. And he probably did. Maybe that’s all this has ever been—him looking at signs that were never there.
“Thanks,” she murmurs, then turns back to her mother.
He makes a decision.
It’s time to let her go, in every sense of the word.
CHAPTER SEVEN
winnie
6 MONTHS BEFORE FILMING
This just doesn’t seem scientificallypossible.
Winnie chews lightly on her pencil while she studies the sketch in her lap, assessing the spread thighs, the clenched buns, the strong hands grasping petite ankles at an angle that just doesn’t seem feasible, let alone comfortable. Then again, she’s been perpetually single for as long as she can remember. Who is she to say?
Winnie squints, then tilts her head to the side.Maybe if I?—
No.
The client gave her a brief, and it’s her job to follow it—especially with this client, an incredibly famous independent romance author who not only hired her to create the cover of a new special edition of her biggest seller, but also commissioned a trial illustration for the interior scene art. She needs to get this right. Sure, her job as a junior designer for a major publishing house in New York City is everything her fifteen-year-old self ever wanted, but running her own company with the world as her office? Working exclusively on romance novels? Answering only to herself? That’s the dream. And while, yes, the social media channels for her side gig have gained enough traction forauthors to notice, having a major bestseller like this under her belt will change the game entirely. She might be able to take her freelance business full-time.
If I get it right.
If she hires me for the entire project.
If I can figure out how to make this gravity-defying sexual position look lessCirque du Soleiland moreFifty Shades of Grey.
Winnie slides her gaze to the computer teetering on the edge of the coffee table she’s been repeatedly decoupaging for at least three years and rereads the excerpt. Then she scoots lower on the floral-embroidered armchair she had to have the minute she saw it at Chelsea Flea and lifts her legs high.
