“Us?”
I rolled my shoulders back and stood taller. “I know this is probably awkward, but I wanted to make sure we were good.”
She blankly stared at me, baffled by my words.
I tried again: “When Grey told me you were coming tonight, I wanted to make sure you and I were OK. I know we didn’t end on the best terms, but I wanted to make sure we were OK being in the same room together.”
“Why wouldn’t I be OK with being in the same room as you? We’re both adults now, Landon. We don’t need to be the extremely angst-filled children that we were for so long.” She smiled, and it felt genuine.
I lowered my brow. “Right. Of course. I just wanted to...”
Talk to you. I wanted to see you and talk to you and be near you after all those years of not, because being with you was the last time I felt like I was at home.
Shit.
I was insane.
I blinked. “OK, well. Good. I’m glad we can be on good terms.”
“Of course. No harm, no foul.” She said it so nonchalantly, as if we didn’t have such a heavy history with one another. “It’s clear that Eleanor and Grey are growing pretty close, so we’ll probably be in the same vicinity from time to time. So perhaps it’s best we go back to the way we were.”
Her words lit a fire in my heart. The way we were when we were in love... the way we were when we used to hold one another through the darkness.
“Yes,” I greedily said. “I’d like that a lot.”
“You know...” She shrugged. “Like we were before we ever made that silly bet in high school. Just sarcastic and light. Nothing more, nothing less.”
If that wasn’t a knife through my chest.
I fidgeted with my hands, unsure what to do with them. “Right. Yes. Of course. Sarcastic and light. I like that.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “Me too. Easy.”
“So...” I lowered my brows to study her. “We’re cool?”
She smiled so bright, I swore my mind tried to take snapshots of her face so I could remember her forever. “Cooler than a cucumber.”
“Cooler than the flip side of a pillow,” I added in.What? Shut the hell up, Landon.
“Yeah, something like that.”
Before I could say anything else, Willow showed up, tapped me on the shoulder, and leaned in toward me. “I’m sorry tointerrupt, but you’re supposed to do a welcome toast in five minutes. They are asking for you up front.”
Shay’s eyes danced over Willow, and then she looked at me. She tensed up and took a few steps backward. She frowned as she looked Willow’s way, and a knot formed in my gut as I realized what it probably looked like.
“Shay—” I started.
“We’ll catch up later. Go ahead.” She gave me a tiny smile. “Go be Mr.Hollywood.”
37Landon
I tried to get near Shay so we could talk on a deeper level, but we were always intermixed with groups of people. Plus, it almost seemed as if she’d been avoiding looking at me. We could be interacting with the same individuals, but she never looked my way. On top of that, whenever I said anything, she’d laugh with the crowd, but I swore she’d turn away and roll her eyes too. At one point I thought I saw her make a gagging gesture.
A little while later, when I was able to track her down, I found her sneaking into a closed-off room with a security guard standing outside. She flashed him a pass that Greyson had given her and went inside.
I followed her toward the back room with my VIP pass in my pocket and showed it to the security guard. “Do you think you can make sure no one comes in here?” I asked, wanting to have a chance to have a real heart-to-heart with Shay for the first time.
The security guard cheesed from ear to ear. “Hell yeah, she’s hot.”