“Is it too obvious?”
Both Logan and Maddison burst into laughter through the phone. “Zee, you have a private chef coming, for Christ’s sake.”
“Fuck. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I’ve never done this before.”
“Just be yourself,” Logan soothes. “That’s what tonight is about.”
“What if she doesn’t like the real me?” Leaning my forearms on the counter, I keep my focus on my two best friends through the phone screen, needing a little encouragement.
“Then she doesn’t know what she’s missing,” Maddison adds. “But I’ve been around you both for months. She likes you. She just doesn’t like the act you put on, so cut that shit out with her.”
“Zee,” Logan interrupts. “Tell her everything.”
“I will.”
Looking back at the table set to perfection, realization hits me. This isn’t Stevie.
“Hey, guys, I gotta go. Love you both.”
“Love you, Zee.”
“Good luck, man. Love you,” Maddison finishes before I hang up our video call.
As soon as we’re disconnected, I call the private chef I hired to cancel. Then I place a few different food delivery orders. Taking everything off the table, I replace it all with two regular plates, paper napkins, and a coaster for beer at both my seat and Stevie’s.
I make sure Rosie’s crate, leash, and toys are perfectly where they need to be because even though tonight is more than just a home visit, there’s still that aspect to it.
Since Christmas, I’ve been visiting Rosie once or twice a week, but I purposefully kept it quiet from Stevie, partly because I didn’t want to break her heart if it didn’t work out and partly because it had nothing to do with her.
Adopting is for Rosie, but selfishly it’s for me too. Rosie just wants to love and be loved, as do I.
Pacing my living room, I keep my eyes glued to the floor-to-ceiling windows on the far side, looking like a creep as I wait for Stevie to leave her building and head over to mine. It’s still a bit before seven, but the nerves are sinking in.
I’ve never done this. I’ve never had dinner and conversation with a girl I had feelings for. Who am I kidding? I’ve never had feelings, period. This is all fucking terrifying and nerve-wracking.
I have no idea where we’ll stand after tonight. Will we go back to Stevie simply working on the airplane my team charters? Or will she give me a chance to prove that I can be more than the guy in the tabloids?
More than anything, I hope it’s the latter because I’m showing someone who I am for the first time in a long time, and I don’t know if I can handle being abandoned for it again.
My phone rings on the kitchen island, pulling me out of my worry. Jogging over, I quickly answer the unknown number, eager to talk to the girl I haven’t been able to stop thinking about.
“Stevie?” I quickly answer with an all-too excited smile.
The line is quiet, with no response.
“Stevie, can you hear me?” Plugging my opposite ear, I listen harder.
“Evan?”
My stomach drops to the floor. I want to throw up. I want to hide. I want to chuck my phone against the wall, hearing this woman’s voice. The woman who left me when I was sixteen.
“Mom?”
29
STEVIE
I’ve been a ball of nerves all day. I have no idea what’s going to happen tonight. I don’t know what he’s going to say, what I’m going to say, or where things will stand after it’s all over.
What I do know is that I’m wearing some awfully see-through panties under all my winter layers in hopes that Zanders will be seeing them and subsequently tearing them off.
A physical relationship would be easy. It’s what I think I can handle and what he wanted initially, but now he won’t give it up without something more. But something more with him scares me.
Everything magnifies with him. If I thought I was broken after Brett, that’s incomparable to the potential level of destruction Zanders could leave in his wake. On the flip side, what I thought was love with my ex, isn’t even on the same playing field of where my feelings could go if I open my heart to the possibility of Zanders.
It’s all terrifying.
As I ride the private elevator up to Zanders’ penthouse, my throat is thick with nerves. The building is stunning and pristine—money in the form of walls. The exclusive hallway off the elevator to his place is clean and modern but cold.
Swallowing down the instinct to run, I knock two times on the large mahogany door of Zanders’ penthouse, but after a minute, there’s no answer.