Rock the City: A Midnight Fate Novel (15 page)

“I’m sorry,” Lark mouths. She says it twice more before she tries a softer approach. “She’s gone, Lane. Don’t you care?”

“If you knew me at all, Lark, you’d see this
is
me caring. Now, if you guys are done shitting all over my life, I need to try to find my girlfriend.”

“What about her?” Easton asks with a flick of his head toward my bedroom.

In an even tone, I decide to give it to them as straight as I can—not that I owe them anything. “There’ve only ever been two women in my life: the one I’m in love with, and the other I’ll always love.” My words aren’t going to make much sense to them, but time isn’t on my side tonight. If I haven’t already lost Noelle for good, I’ll have to work hard to get her back.

Without saying anything else, Lark and Easton walk hand in hand down the hallway toward the elevators. Another relationship that’ll need mended once I work this all out—if I
can
work it out.

I’m barely through the doorway to my room when Lemon senses me behind her. “They think I’m a whore,” she says with a shaky voice and a stuffy nose.

“If they knew the whole story, they’d think differently.”

“It’s okay. They’re not wrong.”

The last thing I should do is leave her, especially with the things my friends said to her still lingering in the air, but with Noelle out there on the road going who knows where with God knows who, I have to find her.

Lemon takes away some of my confusion when she says, “Go after her, Lane. If she means that much to you, I want you to get her back.”

I pace back and forth, trying to decide my next move, desperately wanting to believe Lemon means what she’s saying. She watches as I stab at my phone, hitting more wrong keys than right before the call goes straight to voice mail. “Fuck.”

I try to think where she could be going this late at night, considering she left all her stuff in my closet and bedroom. That’s when Lemon becomes my voice of reason. “She won’t answer you until you show up and make her hear you out. You’re going to have to do some begging, but if you’re anything like you used to be, and I’m pretty sure you are, she’d be stupid to stop loving you.”

Stuck between a rock and a hard place, my heart’s already out the door. But I’ve done Lemon wrong so many times in the past I’m scared to walk out on her again. I’m always so quick to chase my dreams when I should have stuck around to help her realize some of her own. Maybe if I had, she wouldn’t be working at Lola’s with shitty self-esteem and a world of assholes surrounding her.

“Will you be here when I get back, Lemon?”

“I’m the reason Noelle left. She already hates me and she hasn’t even met me.”

“Please, Lemon. Just stay here until I get back so we can figure things out. This isn’t me putting you second or not caring about your feelings. This is me chasing my future—a future I want you to be a part of.”

The second she says, “Déjà vu,” I already know she’s not going to be here when I get back. No matter how many times I try to tell her I need her in my life, that it’s never been about me, she’s already gone.

Plain and simple, if I stay, I’ll lose Noelle. If I go, I’ll lose Lemon. And I need them both in my life.

“What’s a beautiful girl like you doing out this late all by herself?”

I stare at the driver’s information card taped to the front of the car, straining to read his name. “Juan, is it?”

“Juan Pablo, but you can call me Juan.”

The way he rolls his tongue and pushes all the syllables of his name together makes it sound way hotter than his actual reflection in the rearview mirror. If his face matched his accent, I might be tempted to do something stupid—though revenge sex has never been my thing, and I’ve had plenty of opportunities to cash in.

“Well, Juan, I’m just a girl who’s a long way from home and ready to get back where I belong.”

“You don’t like the city?

Another layer of sadness wraps around my heart when I tell him, “I love the city.”

“Then maybe you’ll come back sometime soon.”

His optimism might be infectious if I had any reason to go back. Even when I visit Lark, or when she has the baby and demands I’m by her side, I’ll always have to worry about running into Lane. “Maybe” is as much of a commitment as I can give right now.

I close my eyes, not wanting to talk about the future when I’m having enough trouble getting through each passing minute. I’m thankful when he takes the hint and leaves me alone, only asking me simple questions like if I need to stop and use the restroom or if I’m hungry. Those are easy questions with easy answers—and about all I can handle.

By the time the cab pulls in front of my townhome on Highlawn Avenue two and a half hours later, I’m so tired all I want to do is fall into bed. With nothing but my purse in my hands and the dress on my body, I slide out of the cab, ready for Juan to stop slaying me with his romantic accent.

When I hesitate a second too long to put one foot in front of the other, Juan waits for me, even offering me his hand. “Are you okay?”

Okay.

Right now, that word is so foreign to me; I’m not sure I’ll be okay another day in my life. How I went from being so in love with Lane this morning to hating him as soon as the sun went down, I’m not entirely sure. What we had I could feel from my soul. I was positive he’d never do anything to hurt me—at least not intentionally.

“Would you like me to walk you to your door?” Juan asks with a hopeful gleam in his eyes. Seems I can keep the attention of every guy but my boyfriend these days.

“I’m fine. Thank you for the ride, and keep the change,” I tell him as I hand him a wad of folded bills.

As soon as the money’s in his hand, his eyes light up even more. I wasn’t kidding when I told him I’d pay him double for going out of his way. “Thanks for the ride, Juan. I appreciate it.”

“You have my card if you need a ride back to Jersey, or even Manhattan. I’ll come and get you any day of the week.”

Smiling at his generosity, even if it’s really my money he wants, I’m glad there are still some nice people in the world. “Thank you.” I walk down the brick path toward my front door. After I unlock it and turn on the light by the stairs, I suddenly wish I had a cat. At least if I did, I wouldn’t be coming home to a house that’s so quiet I can hear the second hand ticking on my watch.

An incoming text makes me jump and I realize how tense my body is. The back of my neck hurts, and it’s painful to press on the muscles in my shoulders with my fingertips.

I need a hot shower to wash the night away, but the thought of standing under the spray reminds me too much of sex with Lane last night. I decide to skip it and sit on the edge of my bed with my phone in my hand, looking around my room like it’s been years since I’ve been here instead of two days. Loneliness has never felt this suffocating.

The only contact with the rest of world I have is through the missed calls, texts, and notifications from social media. But as I scroll through them all, what surprises me the most is that none of the voice mails or messages are from Lane. Other than one vague text asking me where I am, he hasn’t made much of an effort to track me down. That only makes it worse.

Right away, my mind goes to dark places. Visions of him naked in his bed with some tall, gorgeous woman, with so many tricks up her sleeve you’d think she was a magician. I stand staring at my reflection in the mirror, wondering if I’ll ever be enough for one man or if I’ll always leave them wanting more and what I can’t give them.

Every guy I’ve dated is always quick to make promises, especially once he’s getting what he needs physically, but eventually, they always find someone better—someone more interesting than a cosmetologist from a small town in the middle of nowhere.

That’s why tonight, as I change into my pajamas, I bypass some of the shirts Lane gave me, ones he loved knowing were wrapped around me when we talked each night. And when I get in bed without him, my mind still thinks he’s going to be calling me for one of our late-night phone dates. It hasn’t sunk in yet that I’ll never get another call from him, and I’ll never feel as safe as I do when he’s holding me in his arms.

Just as I reach for the other pillow on my bed, snuggling it against my chest, my phone beeps with another message, and my heart dips all the way to my toes when I think it could be Lane. As mad as I am at him, and as hateful as I want to be, I still want to talk to him. I’m human. I didn’t fall in love with him in a day, and I’m not going to fall out of love with him in a day’s time either. It’s going to take some deep soul searching to find the girl I was before he came into my life. That’s how much he’s changed me already.

When I work up the courage to check the screen, it’s just Lark with another worried message, begging me to call her back. I can’t call right now, so I do as much as I can, a simple text message so she won’t hear the hurt in my voice or make me cry when she tells me how much she loves me.

Noelle: Home safe.

Her response comes back instantly, the relief in her words plain as day.

Lark: Ohmigod, thank God. I’ve been so worried. Any chance home means New York?

Noelle: I’m in PA.

Lark: If I leave now, I can be there in no time.

Noelle: I’m going to bed. Stay with your husband. The baby needs you to rest.

Typing out the words brings tears to my eyes. It’s not that she doesn’t deserve the happiness she’s found; it’s that I was so sure Lane and I would be following in their footsteps.

As I press the button on the side of my phone to turn it off, I debate changing my number in the morning. The only way I’m going to get over Lane is to completely erase him from my life. With a new number, I won’t be tempted to call him or message him—even if I’ll be thinking about him no matter where this world may take me.

I think I’m dreaming when my alarm goes off at seven in the morning, not even remembering I set it the night before out of habit. My staff at the salon isn’t expecting me for another week and a half. If I go in today, I’ll look like a failure, and they’ll ask so many questions I’ll have no choice but to break down and tell them the truth.

If I stay home, all I’ll do is drown myself in ice cream and sappy movies that’ll only make me feel shittier than I already do.