Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 65643 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 328(@200wpm)___ 263(@250wpm)___ 219(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 65643 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 328(@200wpm)___ 263(@250wpm)___ 219(@300wpm)
“Yeah, because I care,” I said triumphantly.
“Garrett.” Landon began parsing out his words carefully, like he was talking to a dimwitted child. “Noemi left you, and you didn’t fight for her. You just moved your ass into a studio apartment and started doing her dirty work.”
“You shouldn’t have to fight to keep someone with you,” I argued. I hadn’t finished my psych degree, but that was common sense.
“No, but you should be with someone you love so much that you can’t help but fight. You might lose, but fuck, Garrett, you fight.”
I knew the recrimination in Landon’s voice wasn’t all directed at me. He hadn’t fought once, and it had cost him. He’d learned a lesson that he was trying to impart to me.
“So you’re saying I should have fought for Noemi?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know. It doesn’t fucking matter. What I’m saying is that when something that really matters is at risk, your answer is to walk away, not fight. You force yourself to stop caring, and you give it up.”
I frowned deeply, hating the note of truth in his words. “I only walked away from one marriage,” I said, still hoping that actually, Landon was wrong and should shut the fuck up already. “It’s not like I give up on things all the time.”
“Yeah? Then when is your second book coming out, pal?”
“Oh, come on,” I exploded. “That’s totally different.”
Landon crossed his arms and leaned back, satisfied that his shot had landed.
“It is,” I insisted.
He shook his head. “No. It’s the exact fucking same. You loved being a bestselling author. I thought we were going to have to hire a professional to deflate your huge fucking head. But then it wasn’t so easy to write the next one. Your editor wasn’t sucking your dick over the pages you sent in. So what did you do?”
I hadn’t opened the draft in months. I was waiting for inspiration to strike. “I put it on the backburner,” I said stiffly.
Landon walked his index and middle finger across the table, his eyebrows raised.
I stared at them until they hit the edge of the table. Maybe it was true. Maybe I’d given up too easily on Noemi. Maybe I hadn’t tried hard enough with my second book. But what the hell did any of it have to do with Destiny?
“Aren’t your parents psychologists?” Landon asked, exasperation threading his voice. He’d picked up and put down his own burger a few times now. He wanted to eat, not keep dragging a horse’s head down to water, trying to make the damn nag take a drink. “You finally found something you can’t walk away from. Can’t give up on. But you don’t know how to fucking fight for it, so you’re just sitting on your ass, letting assholes like that paparazzi get in your face.” He took a big bite of his burger, but I could tell by how quickly he chewed he’d thought of something else to say. I waited, hoping it was advice or a mea culpa or something more palatable than what he’d given me so far.
“It’s pathetic,” Landon was finally able to pronounce, his voice rising. “Fucking pathetic.”
The kids two tables away looked over.
“Sorry,” Landon muttered.
I stared at my untouched burger while Landon ate his. What he wasn’t getting, what he didn’t understand, was that fixing shit was my way of fighting. If it was a martial art, I’d be a black belt. But I couldn’t fix it when I was the problem. The best I could do was stay away. He called it giving up, but I called it the only bit of damage control I could give Destiny now.
“I think you’re chicken shit,” Landon said when I tried to explain it. “Go to her, tell her you fucked up and you can’t fix it, but you love her. And if it’s not enough, then fuck, Garrett, move on. But don’t just walk away again.”
“I’m not chicken shit,” I said.
“Then prove it.” Landon countered, and bit into his burger again.
32
DESTINY
I lasted a week in Colorado before I decided it was time to go home. I’d licked my wounds clean. I’d let the worst of the headlines pass. I’d rebuffed Andrew’s repeated offers to talk to the press on my behalf.
“You’re not losing out on James Bond because of me,” I told him. “If you tell them we staged our relationship, they’re going to start wondering what was in it for you.”
“I could just tell them we’d broken up,” he said.
It wouldn’t work, though. The press had pictures of Garrett and me together taken before Andrew and I had gone to an award ceremony together, hand-in-hand. I didn’t want Andrew drawing any more attention to himself than he had to. As the injured party, they’d love him even more unless he gave them a reason to deride him.