I was done.
Rhodes glanced down, and I focused on him, and without looking at my past, we turned and walked away, leaving him behind. To stand there, to stare, to walk away; I didn’t know and I didn’t give a single shit. Not a fraction of one.
And what had to be about a minute of walking later, I suddenly stopped. Rhodes stopped too, and I threw my arms around his neck. He bent down and put his arms around my lower back, pulling me into that body, cuddling me close.
“You’re the best,” I told him seriously.
His hand snuck beneath my jacket and shirt and palmed my lower back as he whispered, “I love you, you know that.”
Pulling him down so that he was ear level with my mouth, with goose bumps on my skin and a warmth that could have started a wildfire, I whispered back, “I know.”
Rhodes’s breath was a puff against my throat, and I felt him let out a deep sigh a moment later. He shifted and his cheek nuzzled mine. After a moment, with my face tingling from the rub of his stubble, he pulled back and aimed that purple-gray gaze at me. “Ready?” he asked.
I grabbed his hand and nodded. “Let’s go save some front row seats to see our star-in-the-making win.”
The man I loved squeezed my hand, and we went inside to do just that.
Epilogue
“You look like a princess, Yuki.”
Yuki bounced her shoulders from her spot in front of the mirror that had been set up in her room by the designer who had loaned her the dress she was wearing tonight, ignoring the squawk of disapproval from the stylist who had arranged everything. My dress. Her dress. The makeup and hair people that had been hired to take her from a “seven to eleven.”
She was ridiculous, but she really did look like an eleven.
The woman the world knew as a pop star, but I knew as my great friend preened as she turned around. “I’ve got eight layers of makeup on, I’m not going to be able to breathe for the next six hours, and I’m going to need help peeing, but thank you very much, my love.”
I laughed. “You’re very welcome, and it would be my honor to hold up your dress while you go pee. If you have to take a poopy, I’m out of there though.”
It was her turn to laugh. “No poo, but we have peed in front of each other a lot over the years, haven’t we?” she asked with an almost dreamy expression on her face.
I knew exactly what she was envisioning: all the awesome hikes we’d gone on, which included the dozens of times we’d had to keep an eye out for each other when other hikers came by. We’d had a lot of fun over time, and it made me so happy that she genuinely enjoyed all of our adventures back home.
My friend shrugged and took her time eyeing me up and down. “And you, my glowing angel, look like a fifteen.” She wiggled her eyebrows and ignored the noise her makeup artist made at the movement. “I’ll forgive you for cheating.”
I rolled my eyes. “Cheating. Right.”
“It’s the hormones. You got that natural glow this half-inch of highlighter and bronzer can’t compete with.” She whistled, and I curtsied about as much as I could, which wasn’t much considering how tight this dress was. “I bet Kaden’s going to shit himself when he sees you.”
His mention surprised me for about a split second. I hadn’t heard his name in… a year? One of his songs had come on while I’d been in the car with Jackie and Amos, and the two had started instantly booing before changing the station. That had been the last time I’d thought of him too, and that had been brief.
“If he shits himself, I hope someone catches it on camera,” I joked, adjusting the strap of the dress I’d been fitted for two months ago when Yuki had originally invited me.
She cackled, and we high-fived. And not for the first time, I thanked my mom for giving me such a good friend—such good friends, in general. With Yuki being one of those at the very top of the list.
We’d seen each other a ton over the last four years. She’d spent Thanksgiving with us once, New Year’s twice—even though I’d warned her we just went a couple towns over to see fireworks if it wasn’t a drought year—and randomly throughout the year, she dropped by when she could. She’d rented out a yacht that second summer I’d been in Pagosa Springs, and we had met her in Greece and spent one of the best weeks ever. Even her sister, Nori, had come too.
The following year, she invited us to do the same in Italy, but… I hadn’t been allowed to fly at that point. I hadn’t regretted it either. Neither had Rhodes. Am had huffed and puffed, but he’d hung out with me the whole week we would have been gone, and he’d even rubbed my feet once.