Chapter 33

I wrapped on filming my latest movie and got ready to fly back home. I packed up my stuff and had everything ready to go for my flight the next morning. I called up room service and lounged on the couch eating dinner with an old movie on. A beep went off alerting me that I’d received an email. I saw that it was from Brianna and smiled.

She’d promised to email me from her honeymoon. I opened the email and read her message telling me all about the honeymoon so far. I couldn’t help but smile as I read through it. There were very few people in this world happier for her than me. She told me there were pictures attached that I had to look at. Assuming they were some goofy "wish you were here, but not really” pictures of her and Ryan I opened the attachment immediately.

My smile faded the second the first picture popped up on the screen and suddenly I doubted if there was anyone in this world who hated Brianna as much as I did. Staring back at me was a picture of Corey and I from the wedding. I remembered taking it. They’d matched up everyone in the wedding party. I’d felt awkward about it, but had sucked it up and let them take the picture.

I’d fully expected the expressions on our faces to show our displeasure in the picture, but that wasn’t the case. We both looked like we couldn’t be happier. Not only did the smiles we had on look genuine, but his arm was around my waist and I was practically cuddled up to him with my head resting slightly on his chest. You could ask a million people what their impression of that picture was, and every single one of them would tell you that we were a couple.

I fought back any emotion I was feeling and clicked to the next one. I didn’t like it any better. It was a picture of Corey and I dancing. I had my head pressed against him with my eyes closed and his head was resting on the top of mine with his eyes closed as well.

The third picture was another one of us dancing except this time we were looking straight into each other’s eyes. If I hadn’t realized it was the two of us I would have thought the two people in the picture were desperately in love. You could almost feel it radiating off of it. I continued to scroll through the pictures Brianna had sent, and every one of them included both Corey and I. There was no mistaking her intentions in sending these to me.

I groaned and exited out of the pictures. It wasn’t until then that I realized I was crying. I put a hand to my face to wipe away the tears and it felt like a dam had broken. My cheeks were soaked. Unable to hold it in I crawled into bed, pulled the covers over my head and let myself cry.

I cried because I didn’t think things would ever work for Corey and I. I cried because I realized how badly I really wanted them to. I cried because I missed him more than anything. I cried because he’d made enormous efforts twice and I’d blown him off each time because I was still hurting.

When my alarm went off the next morning, it didn’t take me long to turn it off. I was wide awake. There had been no sleep for me that night. I’d spent the whole night thinking about Corey. I caught my ride to the airport and walked up to the desk to check in. As I put my luggage up to check it I glanced at the departures board. My breath caught in my throat. How was that the first place I’d zeroed in on?

“Excuse me, wait!” I called to the woman taking my luggage.

“Yes, miss?” she queried. I hesitated. I shouldn’t be doing this.

“I need to change my flight,” I told her. Despite the confused look on her face, she nodded and walked over to a computer.

“Where to?”

“Are there still seats on this one?”










“So what are you doing tonight?” Ferris asked. Corey looked over at his friend and shrugged before picking the dumbbell back up. He finished his rep before answering.

“No idea. How about you?”

“I think some of the guys were going to head out somewhere. You in?” Corey thought about it for a moment. He didn’t have anything better to do.

“Yeah, let me know what the plan is.”

Corey finished his workout and headed home. He made himself a snack before hopping into the shower. He’d just settled down on the couch with his laptop when his doorbell rang. He groaned and got back up to answer the door. He actually took a step back when he saw Amelia standing on the other side.

He wasn’t sure if he was seeing things and rubbed his eyes to make sure he wasn’t asleep. When he refocused she was still standing there. What was she doing at his house? He couldn’t read the expression on her face, but then again she was wearing sunglasses and he couldn’t see her eyes. She stood there like a statue and he wasn’t really sure what to do.

“Amelia?” he finally managed to say.

Her face faltered then, just for a second. He saw her mouth twitch. He’d seen that twitch before. He reached up and gently pulled the sunglasses off of her face. Tears were welling up in her eyes, threatening to spill over any second. He couldn’t take it and pulled her into a hug.

The second her head hit his shoulder she began to cry. Giant sobs overtook her and he held her as her body shook. She held on to him too, almost too tightly, like she thought he’d float away. He wasn’t sure why she was here but as he began to think about it he started to get upset. Last time he’d seen her she’d wanted nothing to do with him and now she was here crying on his shoulder. What would drive her to him like this?

“Meels, sweetie, please. What’s wrong? Did something happen?” he asked, pulling away from her and looking into her eyes. She sniffed and nodded, but didn’t say anything.

He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her into the house. He didn’t want to leave her standing on the porch when something awful had obviously happened in her life. She followed his lead over to the couch and sat down next to him.

“Okay, please tell me what’s wrong. Is someone sick? Did someone get hurt?” All she did was nod and his heart dropped. “Who, Meels?”

“Me,” she whispered. He felt sick.

“What?! What’s going on?” He was panicking now as every worst case scenario ran through his head.

“I love you.” He looked at her in shock. That had been the absolute last thing he’d expected her to say. “I tried not to. I tried to be okay without you in my life, but I’m not. I need you, Cor.”

He took a deep breath and tried to figure out how to respond to that. It wasn’t like he didn’t have the urge to jump all over the furniture Tom Cruise style, but he didn’t really think that’s what Amelia wanted him to do. All he knew was that he’d finally heard her say what he didn’t think that was appropriate.

“I love you too,” he finally said.

“I need to have you in my life, but that doesn’t change how I’ve felt this whole time. This is it for us. If things don’t work this time, they never will. I think we have to take things slow.”

“Sweetie, I’ll do whatever it takes to have you back in my life. I fucked up, I know, but I promise you that I’m working on being better for you. I have been since Hawaii, even when I thought I didn’t have a prayer when it came to getting back together. I’ll do anything for you.”

She gave him a small smile and wiped the tears that had stopped off of her face. He looked down into her eyes and couldn’t hold back any longer. He grabbed her face with both of his hands and kissed her. She wrapped her arms around his neck and he knew that there was no way he was going to fuck this up again.

Amelia only stayed for two days because she had to get back to LA. Thankfully he was only a couple weeks from returning for the season. He gave her a long lingering kiss at the airport and stayed where he was until she was completely out of sight. She kept turning around and flashing him that smile of hers as she walked away, and he was determined to see every last one of her smiles.

He finally got back into his car and started to drive home. On his way he couldn’t help but worry about how things were going to go when he got back. Amelia was crazy busy and almost had her next few months planned out and he just hoped that he was going to be able to keep a cool head about it all. No matter what, he was going to have to because he wasn’t ever letting her go again.