How Much I Love (Miami Nights #3) - Marie Force Page 0,1
York grapevine that my boyfriend got married. To someone else!
So yeah, call me crazy, but I’m not in any great rush to make him feel better by calling him and talking it out. He can screw himself. Was he thinking about me when he married her? When he had sex with her? When he let me hear about his “marriage” from other people?
And you wonder why I’m in hiding in my new apartment. A couple of months ago, I inherited the garage apartment at home owned by my aunt and uncle from my sister, Maria, who moved in with her fiancé, Austin. She managed to grab the golden ring with a great guy who came with a beautiful daughter named Everly, whose life Maria saved when she donated bone marrow to Everly.
Maria met Austin a year after the transplant, when they were finally allowed to talk to each other, and fell madly in love one email and text at a time. Austin is a star pitcher who’ll be playing for the Miami Marlins next season. He took a lesser deal than he could’ve gotten elsewhere so he could live in Maria’s town.
Now that’s a real man who steps up for the woman he loves, and I couldn’t be happier for them. They’re adorable together, and Everly is a sweetheart. Maria hit the jackpot, and I’m a nasty cow for being jealous that my sister and cousin have it all figured out while I hide out, hoping the whole world will just go away and leave me the hell alone.
Of course, with my mother battling breast cancer and me being back in Miami to help take care of her, I can’t hide out for long. My brothers Nico and Milo are in charge of dinner for my parents tonight, so I’m able to stay in my bunker for a while longer.
I watch mindless TV and try not to think about what I’m going to do about Marcus’s nonstop texts, or Wyatt, the one-night stand, trying to score a second night, or my mom’s illness, or anything other than which of the Property Brothers is going to win their latest Brother vs. Brother challenge.
I need a real job beyond waitressing at the family’s restaurant. At nearly twenty-eight, I’m living in an apartment owned by one aunt and uncle while working for another aunt and uncle. Not where I thought I’d be at this age, that’s for sure. I need to go to New York and get my stuff out of my cousin Domenic’s apartment. I need to get a freaking life. That’s the bottom line.
My phone buzzes again. I swear to God, I’m this close to blocking Marcus. But this text isn’t from him.
It’s the weirdest thing how I can’t stop thinking about what a great time I had at my buddy’s wedding. I never expected to meet the sweetest, sexiest bridesmaid in the history of sweet, sexy bridesmaids.
God, it’s from Wyatt, the first one-night stand of my life. At least, I intended it to be a one-night stand. He has other ideas.
Coming to Miami this weekend to hang with Jason and Carmen before my interview at Miami-Dade on Monday. Any chance I might run into you while I’m in town?
I have a systemwide meltdown as I read and reread his texts. Why had I given him my number, anyway? Oh, right, because I refused to leave with him from the wedding, so we exchanged numbers so I could sneak into his hotel like a dirty secret.
“Ugh,” I say to the walls. “How can this be happening? Why can’t everyone just go away and leave me alone?” I like being alone. Being alone makes it so someone I expected to spend my life with, only to find out he didn’t picture his life with me at all, can’t hurt me.
I never again want to put myself in a situation where something like that can happen. By keeping to myself, I can avoid that kind of drama—and that kind of pain. Yes, I see that my sister and cousin have found great guys who make them deliriously happy, and I’m glad about that. They both deserve all the happiness they can find. Carmen went through hell after her first husband, Tony, a police officer, was shot and killed on the job when they were only twenty-four. It took a long time for her to come back from that and take a chance on love again with Jason.