Chapter 2

I got into my car fuming. Who the hell did he think he was? It was so unlike Corey to pull a stunt like that. Sure, I disappeared from his life without an explanation but it was three years ago! There was just no reason to embarrass me like that in front of Brianna and that Ryan guy. Obviously Corey had changed and not into someone I wanted to know.

My phone rang as I was pulling out onto the street. I looked down and saw that it was Brianna. I didn’t know what I was going to say to her and I knew I should probably calm down before I started spouting off about what an asshole Corey Perry was. My stomach grumbled and reminded me that I’d barely eaten any of my lunch when I left. I shrugged it off and thought about Corey again. How had I been in love with that man? He really should have just sucked it up and been nice and talked to me in private after instead of practically airing our dirty laundry for everyone in the restaurant to hear. Just then my phone rang again and I saw that this time it was Jordan.

“Hey, sweetie,” I answered.

“Lia, hey, are you done with that sky diving thing?” he asked.

“Yeah, I finished about an hour ago. What’s up?”

“Come over, I have a surprise for you,” he said then hung up.

I looked at my phone confused. Now that was strange. I turned around on the street and headed in the opposite direction towards Jordan’s house. He had the gate open for me when I got there. I pulled in and walked to the front door. Before I was even up the stairs he flung the door open and waved me in.

“You look excited,” I commented giving him a kiss as I walked through the front door. It was then that I heard what sounded almost like a baby making some weird noise. I froze in place and looked at Jordan confused. “You want to tell me what’s going on?” Instead of responding he grabbed my hand and pulled me down the hall into the living room. Sitting there in the middle of the floor was a golden retriever puppy.

“Isn’t he awesome?” Jordan asked kneeling down on the ground and petting the puppy. I dropped down onto the floor as well and picked the puppy up. I was definitely a dog person.

“He’s adorable!” I exclaimed. “What’s his name?”

“I haven’t decided yet. I was thinking of Jax. What do you think?” he asked looking at me.

“I think Jax is a cute name. Hi, Jax!” I called looking down at the puppy squirming in my arms. I let him down and watched him bound around the room stopping to smell just about everything he came to. “So what made you decide to get a dog today?”

“Well, I’ve been thinking about getting one for a while and I just happened to see an ad in the paper today and thought ‘what the hell’ and went and picked one up.”

Jordan was a big time impulse buyer. He never thought or planned on getting anything but if it popped into his mind and it sounded good, he bought it. He had a room full of crap that he’d gotten and then never touched again.

“Yeah, you would,” I said laughing at him.

“Anyway, how was the sky diving thing?” he asked.

“It was good. Fun. I’m glad I did it,” I replied. He put his arm around me and hugged me to him.

“Then why do you look so down?” I buried my face in his shoulder and sighed. Exactly how much detail did I want to get into with Jordan?

“I ran into someone from my past that I don’t completely get along with today,” I told him choosing to keep basically everything from him for now.

“Aw, I’m sorry, sweetie. At least it’s over with now, right?” I nodded even though I had the feeling that this was not the last time I was going to see Corey.










Who the hell did Amelia think she was? How dare she just blow him off? He’d been really thrown when he saw her standing next to the table Getzy was sitting at. He knew she was probably living in LA somewhere when he saw her in her first movie, but he never thought he’d run into her. LA was a big city and he didn’t even live that close. He never expected her to be in his neighborhood. He was still slightly in shock over having seen her. The conversation had even left him a bit shaken.

The conversation hardly went the way Corey had envisioned it when he’d thought about what he’d say to Amelia if he ever saw her again. He’d imagined asking her how she’d been, where she’d been, and why she’d just left him like she did. He thought he’d be able to stay calm about it and show her that he had in fact moved on. Unfortunately that’s not the way it went. His shock had triggered a flood of emotions and having a bit of an audience in Ryan and that other girl wasn’t ideal. Instead he’d panicked and pretended like he’d only known her through a friend. The angrier she got, the angrier he got.

She was so flip about it, and that bothered him. He’d loved her. He went over to the dresser in his house and opened the top drawer. He moved aside his socks and pulled out the small box he still had and couldn’t bear to get rid of. Opening it, he looked at the engagement ring he’d picked out just the week before she’d left. He hadn’t even gotten around to telling anyone that he’d planned on asking her to marry him. They were young, really young, and he wasn’t sure how people would take it. But they had been together for five years and had lived together for two. If you didn’t know by then that you wanted to marry someone then maybe it wasn’t meant to be. He’d blown a lot of his signing bonus on that ring. He closed the box and put it back in the drawer.

He wanted to cry. He couldn’t, wouldn’t let himself cry over her. He’d done that enough when she disappeared out of his life. He’d called her parents more than once trying to find out what happened but they just gave him the run-around and told him that it was between him and Amelia and they wouldn’t get involved. God, it had been frustrating to not know what happened. It was still frustrating.

He wanted to hate her, and seeing her today showed him that he did. She’d made it really easy. But damn, did she look good. Her hair was different. She always used to wear it long but now it was to her shoulders and she had bangs swept to one side. What he’d do to her - no. He pushed those thoughts out of his mind. He’d done them before with her and it was good. It was really good. If only he could get Ileana to be more like Amelia in the bedroom. As if on cue he heard his front door open.

“Corey!” Ileana called through the house. He let out a sigh, not really in the mood to be around Ileana and headed downstairs.

“Yeah, I’m here. Is my doorbell broken?” he asked giving her attitude even though he knew she didn’t really deserve it.

“Geez, sorry. I’ll use it next time.” He walked past her and sat down on his couch. Grabbing the remote he flipped on the television and started flicking through channels. “You’re back early from lunch. I thought you would have been gone longer.” He turned and looked at her as she walked into the room and sat down next to him.

“If you thought I’d be gone longer, what are you doing here?” he asked.

She just shrugged and took the remote off of his lap. She turned off the show on Discovery he’d stopped at and put on some stupid chick flick. He groaned and made fists trying to keep from taking his encounter with Amelia out on Ileana.

“So I was thinking that we could go shopping today,” she said turning to look at him. Shopping? Why the hell would he want to go shopping? “You know, you owe me for the other day.”

“Ileana, what the fuck are you talking about? I owe you for what?” he asked baffled.

“You said that you would owe me for taking you to pick up your car when you were having it fixed,” she explained.

“I didn’t say I’d take you shopping. I meant I’d cook you dinner or something!”

“But Cooooorey, I want to go shopping!” she whined. He threw his head back and made a mental note not to tell Ileana he owed her ever again.

“I’m really not in the mood. Can we go another day?” he asked giving in because it was easier than listening to her bitch and moan about it.

“I have things to do this next week and my day is wide open today,” she pouted. Things to do my ass, he thought. She was an ‘aspiring model’ that hardly did anything. What was he doing with her? He felt like she got on his nerves more than she made him smile. He felt her grab his arm and put her head on his shoulder. He looked down and she was looking up at him with a pleading look on her face. “Please?”

“Fine, lets go,” he said pushing her off of him and standing up. She jumped up with a large smile on her face.

“So what’s my limit?” she asked. He clenched his jaw and wondered how exactly he’d gotten roped into spending money on her.