Did he have to look wounded? Like I’d done something dastardly by hiding away from him? “I only got here last week.”
His forehead puckered, and I fought back my urge to smooth those lines with my fingers like I had when we were together. He wasn’t mine to touch. He wasn’t mine in any form of the word.
“Last week? Funny, that’s when Leah’s roommate…” His eyes widened to a nearly impossible size.
“Put that together, did you?” The elevator dinged open behind me, and I shamelessly retreated into it, seeing the camera crew heading our direction. I needed space, and I needed it now.
“Wait.” He lunged forward, stopping the elevator door with his arm. “I don’t understand.”
“Paxton will fill you in,” I said and pushed the close-door button.
“Paxton?” He shook his head again.
I blew out a frustrated sigh, realizing there were other students in the elevator. “Paxton Wilder. Your best friend. Come on, Nova—”
“Landon,” he snapped. “I’ve never been Nova to you. Not in that way.”
You’re like a supernova—an explosion so bright no one can see past you, I’d told him once after he’d won a competition. But like my love, that name had been twisted into something entirely different. Now he was Casanova…and no longer mine.
“What we were to each other sure as hell doesn’t matter anymore,” I countered. “Me being here isn’t some act of fate, or God. It’s an act of Paxton. If you want answers, go to him. Once this door shuts, my plan is never to speak to you again.”
“You think that’s possible? That I’m just going to ignore you?”
“It’s worked pretty damn well for the last two and a half years.”
Someone behind me coughed to hide a laugh.
Landon glared over my shoulder, and then that arrogant Nova smirk appeared, which twisted my insides in opposite directions—one wanting to smack him and the other inconveniently remembering what this man was capable of doing to my body. “Rachel.”
“What?” I shouted. I would pay money to make him stop saying my name like that—like he still knew me, still wanted me, still loved me. Like the last two years had just evaporated and we were still talking about our future in the apartment he’d left me holding the lease for. He didn’t get to say my name like he hadn’t drastically altered the very fabric of my being—I wasn’t that girl anymore.
“We’re at sea for the next four days, so it’s not like you can leave the ship. This isn’t over.” He leaned back, removing his arm from the door.
The doors started to slide shut, and he held my gaze, something heating there. Guess the shock of seeing me had worn off.
“This was over a long time ago,” I said quietly.
He flinched as the doors shut.
I closed the door to our suite and leaned back against it, letting my head thump on the barrier. It hurts. God, it hurts so badly. My hand rested under my heart, praying it would find some semblance of a normal rhythm, but it kept up with my lungs, which worked overtime, bringing giant gasps of air into my chest. Even my throat was on fire from this lump that wouldn’t go the hell away. My face scrunched as I fought back tears. God, I hated crying. What was even worse was that it wasn’t that I was sad. No, my eyes were prickling from anger, from embarrassment, from the pain in my chest from seeing him, from…the myriad of emotions that my body didn’t know how to process.
I drew air into my lungs in a steady stream. You’re stronger than this. You are iron. You are concrete. You are invincible.
All true, but he was my one stupid weakness.
Somehow in the span of those few minutes, he’d managed to slice open my soul and set me back years. How was this fair? He was the one who’d walked out without a word, leaving me collegeless, with a pissed-off family I had to go crawling back to and a lease I couldn’t afford, but from the looks of it, he was fine. More than fine, really, and I was the one trying to get over the newly opened fissure in my heart…again.
“Rachel?” Penna’s voice came from the living room, and my stomach sank. If there was one person on this ship who hated me more than Wilder, it was Penna. She’d despised me for years—since the moment she’d realized that while I was dating Wilder, I was deeply in love with his best friend.
She’d also become my roommate when Leah moved to Pax’s room a couple of days ago. I understood why—Penna needed time to heal out of the public eye, and our suite was off-limits to the rabid camera crew, but man…it was awkward around here at times.
“Yeah, it’s me,” I answered, walking down the hallway of our suite as I composed myself. The marble floors, double bedrooms, and full amenities were way overboard, but I wasn’t complaining. Wilder had gone to a shit ton of trouble to get me here. I just hated that he’d used my best friend to do it.
But he’d fallen in love with her, so I guess it all worked out.
“Hey,” Penna said from her wheelchair. Her leg was casted to her thigh and elevated by one support of the chair, and her superlong blond hair was piled onto her head in a knot. Injured or not, she was ridiculously model-worthy beautiful but still rode a motocross bike better than most of the guys.
“Hey,” I echoed, sinking into the plush leather sofa and stretching my legs out onto the coffee table.
She turned her attention back to her book, settling us into an awkward quiet.
Nervous energy coursed through me, and I sat up, leaning my elbows on my knees to hold my head. God, this was stupid. This was ridiculous. I had six months here with him. Watching him seduce everything in a skirt. How the hell was I going to handle that? Handle him?
“You saw him,” Penna said quietly, putting her book into her lap.
I nodded. “I ran into him. Literally. There were margaritas involved.”
“Did the alcohol help?”
I looked up. “It ended up all over him.”
She snorted, the first laugh I’d heard from her since I got here last week. “Good. Not that he needed it. He’s salty enough as it is.”
I laughed. “That he is.”
“How are you?” Her words were choppy, and I knew how much they cost her.
“Are you honestly asking? Because I’m pretty sure if you weren’t in that wheelchair you’d have no issue throwing me overboard.”
Her head tilted. “I’ve considered it.”
The last thing I could handle right now was Penna’s obvious disgust with my presence, and this was the only place on the ship I was safe from running into Landon. Fantastic.
The door flew open, hitting the wall. “Rach?” Leah yelled down the hall two seconds before she barreled in. “Oh my God! Landon and Pax are going at it right now. What happened?” She plopped on the couch next to me, her legs bare, revealing the parallel scars down the fronts of her legs that she’d kept hidden until this trip—until Paxton had brought out the brave in her. Her whiskey-colored eyes were wide, her brown hair in windblown disarray. Man, I’d missed her every day that she’d been here while I was back in L.A.
“I may have run into Landon.”
“Yeah, I got that part,” she said. “How are you?”