Page 85

“Like a ball and chain,” she shot back, deadpan.

He stared at her. He looked like he was trying to pull off judgmental but came across more doting than anything else. “A little on the nose with that one, don’t you think?”

“Don’t knock a classic.”

“Come over here, and I’ll show you just how much I can knock.”

“Reprobate.”

“Reformed reprobate, you little hoyden.”

She bustled off.

“Get back here!” he called at her back.

“Get back to work!” she called back.

He was so happy I could barely look at him.

Could that have been Nova and I? I was at the point in my life where I knew exactly what I wanted, but how could she?

I glanced at Dair. It was no better. He always oozed a certain air of subtle contentment that had the same effect on my miserable self.

“So let’s work this out,” Turner said to me. “She’s too young for you, but you clearly don’t care, so let’s find her. Dair, put your government plant of a wife on the case.”

Dair studied me. “If that’s what you want, Carter, I can ask her. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.”

“She loves to meddle,” Turner said, and there was affection in it.

“So do you, apparently,” I pointed out.

When I left Turner’s house that day, nothing was solved, but I did feel marginally better. I started meeting up with them again weekly to brainstorm, started getting back into routines, started writing again.

I almost texted Nova a dozen times, more. Just to ask how she was doing, a few times to pathetically tell her I missed her, but I made myself stop short each time. She’d been clear enough that I couldn’t misunderstand what she wanted. Reaching out to her was for me, not for her, and I figured I’d been selfish enough where she was concerned.

In my more hopeful moments, I fantasized about a future where we met up again, where she came back to me, and we were together again, but that’s all those thoughts were. Fantasies. She’d moved on without looking back.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

I WAS ON a date. A hot one. I fully expected to get laid tonight, to stick my dick in a new, gorgeous woman.

I felt a little nauseous at the thought, but I planned to push through that. I’d let myself wallow in misery for months. Nova had clearly moved on, and I needed to do the same.

It was that or track her down and drag her back to my house like a caveman.

My date was named Jovie, and she was a model. A real one, with all the credentials. Runway walk, magazine covers, legs for days, stunning face, and a perfect, lithe body.

I knew in a dispassionate sort of way that she had to be one of the most beautiful women on the planet. Her curly dark blond hair just brushed her shoulders and was styled artlessly. She had striking blue eyes that contrasted in a traffic stopping way with her honey brown, perfectly even skin.

Also she was nice, funny even. Just my type. Anyone with a pulse’s type, to be fair.

I was trying to rouse up the will to fuck her at the end of the night. I was way overdue.

We were at the Fashion Show Mall. Not my first choice, but I’d left it up to her. Mall dates were beyond tedious but even tedious distractions were welcome these days.

I needed to move the fuck on and if someone like Jovie couldn’t help me with that I had no earthly clue what could.

She’d slipped into my DMs pretty recently. At first I’d half assumed I was being catfished when I saw her supermodel timeline.