Rewind It Back (Windy City, #5)(28)

“You’re telling me you never once vented and talked shit about me?” she asks with a laugh.

“No.” My tone is even. “Never once, Hal.”

Her laughter dies.

More silence lingers.

“Did you ever talk shit about me?” I ask, a hint of humor in my tone.

“Only to Luke.”

“What about your dad? God, he probably fucking hates me now, huh?”

Her body tenses and the air shifts around us, going cold once again.

I have no idea how to do this. How to stop bringing us up.

“The house,” I redirect. “Let’s focus on the house.”

She shakes her head, trying to shake off the constant whiplash of this meeting. “Yeah, tell me more.”

“It . . . uh . . . it needs . . . something. I bought it brand new from the builder, so it’s essentially a plain white box.”

I wait to see if that connects any dots for her, but it doesn’t.

“At least we won’t have to undo anything,” she says. “We have a blank slate to work with. That’s my favorite. This is going to be fun.” There’s a genuine smile currently lifting on Hallie’s lips as she grabs a notebook and pen.

It hits me then. She’s doing it. This dream she had that we talked about for years, working for a big-name designer in a big city. Hallie is doing it.

Pride swells when the realization hits me.

And that pride feels conflicting too because I shouldn’t care anymore, but all I can see is the girl next door, the one I’d watch from my window as she redid her childhood bedroom more times than I could count. All to get here.

“Let’s talk about your likes and dislikes.” Hallie draws a line down the middle of the notebook, putting an X on one side and a heart on the other.

That fucking heart. It makes my own skip a beat, seeing her draw one again.

It’s Hallie’s version of a heart where one side overlaps and extends past where it’s meant to stop, giving it a little extra flick at the end.

I don’t know what comes over me. Probably the same form of insanity that caused me to pull her chair close to mine and almost call her “baby.” But whatever it is, it makes me reach out and cover the imperfection of the heart with the tip of my forefinger.

I swear all the oxygen leaves the room.

She stares at my finger and in that moment, I know that every birthday she had from ages thirteen to nineteen are currently running through her mind.

Too nice. Too comfortable. Too nostalgic.

For a second, it feels like the old us sitting next to each other. But then I remember it can’t feel that good again, so I pull my hand away from the heart.

“Why would you do that?” she asks, her voice quiet.

I push down the natural inclination to comfort her and instead say, “I’m surprised you even remember.”

Her brows are furrowed when she looks at me. “What?”

“I’m surprised you remember anything about us, really. You didn’t seem to give a shit about our history the last time we saw each other.”

The words taste horrible as they come off my tongue.

Too mean, I quickly realize.

We sit in silence, and just when I think she’s grabbing her notebook to continue our meeting, she instead puts it in her bag, followed by her laptop.

“What are you doing?”

She stands, slinging her tote bag over her shoulder. “Leaving.”

Hallie is already at the door by the time I realize what’s happening.

“Wait. Why?” I stand too.

“Why?” She laughs condescendingly, turning back to face me. “Why do you think, Rio? I thought I could do this, work together, but there’s no way. Not with you.”

“Hal—”

“One minute you’re being the old you, and the next you’re being a jerk. Then you keep bringing up the past. Pick a lane, Rio! The back-and-forth is exhausting. I’m just trying to do my job and have a working relationship with you, but you’re not letting me. At this point, I’d rather lose out on this opportunity than spend the next six months getting mental whiplash from being around you.”

Fuck. I clearly swung the pendulum way too far in the mean direction.

She exhales a calming breath, facing the door and not me. “You used to be my best friend, and yeah, we haven’t seen each other since then, but I’d rather hold on to the memory of the sweet neighbor boy I loved than replace it with this version of you.”

Without looking back at me, she leaves.





Chapter 9


Hallie


It’s close to two a.m. by the time I pull up to Wren’s house.

My house. The house I’m living in right now.

I don’t know how best to refer to it. It’s temporary, so it doesn’t feel right to call it home, but it’s also the place I’m sleeping and where all my belongings currently reside.

I pull my car close to the curb, parking on the street instead of the driveway. The only time I’ve parked in the driveway was the night I moved in and had boxes to unload. I know the car has some kind of leak and after all the work we did on the house to make it ready to put it on the market soon, I’m not going to decrease its value by leaving oil stains on the concrete from my shitty car.