2. Heidi
1482 Words
2
Heidi
Landon Wright was kissing me.
It was amazing. The best thing that had ever happened to me. He was fulfilling every fantasy I’d had in the back of my head over the last eight months. How many times had I imagined him doing this exact thing?
Last winter, when he’d driven me home from this exact bar, all I’d wanted to do was lean over and kiss him senseless. I’d wanted him to take me up to my apartment and f**k me. I’d wanted so much. And New Year’s, we had been so close to giving in and ending up in this moment together.
Yet, even as drunk as I had been on both occasion, I’d known he was married. I’d known how wrong it was to even want that from him. And I’d walked away.
Now, he was finally kissing me and answering all my silent pleas, and I had to stop him.
Fuck.
I shoved Landon backward with as much force as I could. Then, I moved away from the wall and wiped my mouth.
Fuck!
“Whoa!” I yelled at him. I took another step back from him. Putting distance between us was the only way I wasn’t going to give in again. “Whoa! Married!”
Landon leaned into the space I had vacated and sighed heavily. “Yeah.”
“Are you completely insane?”
He turned to face me, pressing his back against the bricks. His eyes were bright and full of lust. I could understand that look. I was sure it mirrored mine. But he also looked…remorseful. Like the last thing he had wanted to do was hurt me. Again.
“Uh, yeah,” Landon said, “a bit insane at the moment.”
“Well, Jesus Christ, what were you thinking?”
Because I needed an explanation. What the hell had changed that he would go from cutting me off entirely to making out with my face? If we hadn’t gone through with it on New Year’s when we had both been in the thick of it all, I couldn’t fathom how he could do it now.
“That I really wanted to kiss you, and I’d wanted to do it for too damn long.”
I held my hand up and tried to breathe shallowly. “You can’t say things like that to me.”
God, he’s drunk. Of course, I’d known that before I came out here with him, but I hadn’t expected our conversation to veer so far left. And, now, I would never be able to get the feel of his lips or the brush of his tongue or the taste of whiskey mixed with something purely Landon out of my head.
I couldn’t think about that or I wouldn’t be able to think about anything else. Ever.
“I can,” he said, meeting my gaze. “But you act like I shouldn’t.”
His dark brown eyes nearly made me lose it. He was too much. Tall, dark, and handsome was too cliché for Landon with his deep tan from endless days on the golf course and soulful expression. He was a man who had known loss and understood depression but had risen above. There was more to him than the gorgeous Wright looks. But it didn’t excuse his actions.
I didn’t want to be some mistake he’d made when his wife wasn’t in town.
“No, you shouldn’t,” I said. “I won’t do that again. I will not be that kind of girl. It’s disrespectful to me, and it’s disrespectful to Miranda. And…it’s just bad,” I rambled on because, if I stopped, I knew I’d be done for. My fingers were itching to grab him and crush his mouth to mine again. I’d wanted this for months. Even though there were a million and a half reasons that it was a supremely idiotic idea, I still wanted him.
And that had made dating nearly impossible. Somehow, Landon had become the standard that I held all other guys to. Not that I’d had much luck outside of Tinder hook-ups, and I refused to date my coworkers. That was the number one rule. One I had always completely adhered to. No matter how cute the new guy ended up being.
“Yeah, bad idea,” he agreed slowly. “I’m not trying to make you that kind of girl, Heidi.”
“Good, because that would never happen.”
“I’m just lost, and I want you to find me.”
I knew he was drunk, but damn it, that was cheesy. And, f**k me, I hated that I still thought it was sweet of him to say it to me. Even if he wasn’t allowed to.
“Stop that! No sweet talk.”
“I wasn’t—”
“How about no, Landon?”
Then, with all the strength I could muster, I strode back toward the emergency exit. I could do this. I was a strong, fierce, independent woman who worked in a male-dominated field and shattered glass ceilings. I could walk away from one boy. Even if he was a Wright.
Then, he touched me. His hand gently landed on my elbow. He wasn’t demanding my attention, just drawing me away from the door.
“Heidi.”
“What?” I asked in frustration. How was I supposed to leave him behind when he was being so irresistible?
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Stop,” I said. “Please.”
“I’m leaving her.”
My heart stopped beating. My lungs stopped working. My brain stopped functioning. What he was saying was impossible. I honestly couldn’t even believe that those words had come out of his mouth. There was no way in hell that he was leaving Miranda.
“Come again?” I whispered.
“I left Miranda at home to come here because I’m leaving her.”
My mouth fell open. He had said those words. He’d repeated them. He was actually leaving Miranda.
This isn’t a drill, team. This is the real deal!
My brain tried to catch up with the rest of my body, but instead, I stood there, like an i***t. There had to be a catch. There had to be some big joke that was being played on me. Because Landon leaving his wife was way too good to be true.
“Wow,” I said. Then, I blinked rapidly a few times and tried to recover. “I mean…how awful. That has to be so hard, Landon.”
He laughed humorlessly at me. “Heidi, you’re cute.”
I arched an eyebrow at him in question. “I tell you I’m sorry about your wife, and you tell me I’m cute?”
“You can’t hide how much you hate Miranda any more than my family can.”
“Hey,” I said, holding up my hands. “I don’t hate Miranda. I don’t even know her.”
“Well, if you knew her, you’d hate her, too.”
“Maybe so,” I conceded. “But that doesn’t make things any easier for you. Clearly, you must have loved her.”
“It’s just…yeah,” he said. “I don’t know. It all happened today.”
“No wonder you’re drunk and acting like a fool. Maybe we should have addressed you leaving Miranda first and made out second.”
He grinned devilishly. “So, we’re going to make out again?”
“No,” I said, smacking his arm. God, I could hardly keep my mind out of the gutter. I was never going to succeed in keeping his out of there, too. “We shouldn’t have kissed in the first place.”
He might have left Miranda today, but who knew what tomorrow would bring? I doubted he had even filed paperwork for a divorce. I had so many unanswered questions that, even though I wanted to kiss Landon…to give in to this thing between us, I couldn’t do it. I knew it was wrong.
Not just because of Miranda, but also because of all the women I’d seen my dad with.
My mom had died in a carjacking when I was in middle school. She’d been brutally murdered, and I’d been a zombie through much of middle school. Without Emery, I never would have made it.
But my dad had coped with women. He’d go from girlfriend to girlfriend—regulars who came to Hanks, the bar he owned. I knew the signs for when he settled for married women—when a woman flipped the diamond over or took it off, leaving a pale stripe on her ring finger, or when I’d find a wedding ring on the sink at night. I’d decided at a young age that I’d do anything to be a different person than my dad. I wasn’t about to let Landon Wright f**k that up.
“Yeah, I probably shouldn’t have kissed you,” Landon said. He scratched the back of his neck and winced. “But I’d been thinking about it since New Year’s.”
“Landon, you can’t come here and talk to me like this. If you want to talk about Miranda, I’m here.” I held my hands up in supplication. I wouldn’t deny him a friend or a shoulder to cry on, but that was it. “We can talk after the reunion, but now, maybe try to forget about it.”
“About Miranda or you?”
“Both.”
“Not going to happen.” He stepped toward me and cupped my cheek. “There’s no way I could forget about you, Heidi.”
“You’ve done fine so far. Do what you’ve been doing, Landon, and you’ll have no trouble,” I said with a bit more heat than I’d intended. Then, I turned and walked back into Flips.
- Writer
