The Winner Takes It All (Love in L.A. Book 3) (17 page)

Annie:
Okay, thank you.

Groaning, Annie fell backwards onto her bed and started sending a group text to Alex, Katie and Erin.

Annie:
Hey guys, I’m okay. No need to call the police. Yes, I was with Gabe. Erin—Gabe is my ex who broke my heart when his ex-gf got preggers and he left me to be with her for the kid’s sake. Then turned out it wasn’t really his kid, so he was off the hook, but I’d met Casey and moved on. Now he’s trying to get me back again. We had dinner tonight, but nothing else happened. I didn’t even kiss him.

Alex:
I figured that’s where you were, so I wasn’t really trippin’, but Casey sure was.

Annie:
I know, I texted him back, too. He wanted to come to my room now and talk, but I told him it was too late for that conversation.

Katie:
I’m glad you’re okay.

Erin:
So am I, but I want more details on this Gabe guy.

Katie:
Are we doing breakfast tomorrow?

Annie:
Totally. I’ll meet you guys downstairs at ten.

Erin:
Can I come, too?

Annie:
Of course!

Alex:
Duh.

Katie:
Um, hello! You’re one of us now, bitch! Of course you’re coming!

Annie:
Don’t you love my friends?

Erin:
Yes! You guys are my kind of people. I can’t wait for us to all hang out when we’re back in L.A.

Alex:
Ditto!

Surprisingly enough, Annie had a great night’s sleep, even with the impending “talk” with Casey that she was dreading. Her friends just had that kind of effect on her. When she was down, they always knew how to bring her back up again. She knew she was lucky to have them in her life and that she would never have to face anything alone unless she wanted to.

Just as she was finishing up breakfast with her friends, Annie got another text from Casey, asking if she was free to talk. She texted him back and said they would be at the hotel within the next half hour, if he could wait until she returned. He told her to call him when she was back, and he would head over to her room.

When they returned, Alex, Katie and Erin smiled at Annie sympathetically and wished her luck as they parted ways in the hotel lobby.

“We’ll see you after the results show tonight.”

“Okay, thanks for treating us to breakfast,” Annie said as she hugged Katie.

“You’re welcome. Love ya, girl. See you later tonight.” Katie smooched her on the cheek before letting her go again. “And be strong. Don’t take any crap from him.”

Annie laughed. “Thanks, and I won’t. See you guys later.”

After they left, she called Casey and told him she was on her way up to her room. He said he would meet her there in a few minutes.

The loud knock on the door still made her jump, even though she was expecting him. She was nervous and didn’t know what was going to happen. After she let him in, he hugged and kissed her, and out of habit, she returned the actions.

“So I know I’ve been weird lately,” he started as he sat down on the bed. “I didn’t realize how stressful this was all going to be when I agreed to enter this competition.”

Annie dragged a chair next to the bed and angled it to face Casey before sitting down. “Neither did I. I know we’ve both been under a lot of pressure, but I feel like I saw a side of you I didn’t even know existed, and it concerns me.”

“I get that, but that’s not the normal me. You’ve seen the normal me.”

“Have I? How can we know what ‘normal’ will mean to us next year or five years from now? How can I trust what you will be like if we ever have financial troubles in the future?”

“Look, I just let the stress get the better of me this time, but I swear it won’t happen again. I’ll make sure of it. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, Annie, and I don’t want to lose what we have together.”

Annie sighed. “I don’t want to lose that, either, but I don’t know that we have a choice in the matter. If I’m being completely honest, I kind of feel like we’ve already lost it.”

Frowning, Casey shook his head and reached for her hands. “Don’t say that, baby. I love you. We can fix this—we can make it work. I know that we can,” he said almost desperately as he squeezed her hands.

“I dunno… maybe we can… I’m just not sure if I want to anymore.”

Casey’s eyes narrowed as he dropped her hands. “Really?” He leaned back and considered her thoughtfully. “What’s changed? I thought that you loved me.”

Annie avoided his gaze, looking away for a moment as she carefully considered her next words. Finally, she looked up at him again. “Casey, I care about you… a lot. And I do love you, but with everything that’s happened, and with all this crazy stress we’re under, I just don’t really trust my feelings one hundred percent right now. I think maybe it’s a good idea if we take a break from each other for now. We can talk again after this thing is over, when both of us can think straight again.”

For several long moments, there was nothing but silence as Casey sat there staring back at her. His expression was unreadable. Annie returned his gaze for several seconds, but finally it became too uncomfortable and she averted her eyes again, unsure of what to do or say next.

“Is it someone else?” he finally asked.

“No!” she answered a little too quickly.

“Uh huh.” Casey scratched his cheek thoughtfully as he looked her in the eyes. “It’s that guy we ran into at The Grove when we were having lunch at the Farmers Market that one time, isn’t it? You said he was just a friend, but he used to be more than that to you, didn’t he?”

Annie bit her lip before nodding slowly. “His name is Gabe, and yeah, we used to date, but now we’re just friends.”

“Aha. Gabe. Isn’t that the asshole who got his ex-girlfriend pregnant and left you for her?”

Cursing his good memory, Annie nodded again. “Yep, that’s him. But it turned out that the baby wasn’t his after all. He had just told me that day when you got back from the restroom and saw him talking to me.”

“I see. And now that he’s available again, you want to leave me so you can go be with him.”

“No… I mean, I don’t know. I’m not sure what I want anymore. He already asked me for another chance after I saw him that day, but I turned him down. I didn’t tell him I wanted to try again. I told him I wanted to be with you.”

“Okay, so if that’s the case, what’s changed your mind since then?”

Annie shrugged. “I don’t know. You’ve just been different since we’ve been here in New York, and I know you say it’s just because you’re stressed, but you lied to me about not having a serious girlfriend before, and then you overreacted when you saw me with Trey—”

“That motherfucker was trying to kiss you. How is that overreacting?”

“Okay, you didn’t overreact about him trying to kiss me, but then you treated me like I’m the one who tried to kiss him! You acted like I had wronged you, and all I’d done was accept an invitation from a friend to hang out and have dinner. How the hell was I supposed to know that he was going to try to make a move on me, regardless of whether I realized he was attracted to me? Of course I knew he was attracted to me. It felt good! You’d just ditched me to have dinner with Trisha and your crew again.”

“I didn’t ditch you. You didn’t answer your phone,” Casey argued.

“My phone was dead. I couldn’t answer it.”

“That’s not my fault.”

“Well, neither is it my fault that I couldn’t answer your call and missed your invitation to dinner and was left with the option of eating by myself or sharing a meal with a friendly face when I’m stuck here in the middle of a big city I’ve never been to before with no friends here except for you and the other guys.”

“What about Erin?”

“Erin was preoccupied with boy problems. She wasn’t available for dinner that night.”

“So it would’ve killed you to eat alone?”

“Oh my God, I cannot even believe we are fighting about this! Why can’t you just let it go? I didn’t do anything to you on purpose.”

Casey shook his head and rubbed his face with his hands. “I’m sorry, I just can’t stand to think of you with that guy. It makes me fucking crazy. When I saw him trying to kiss you, it took me straight back to that night when I walked into my own apartment and saw Laura kissing him.”

Shaking her head, Annie sighed. “I get it. I totally do. But I’m not her, and you can’t treat me like I am. I did not invite the kiss, nor did I have a clue that he would try something like that. Maybe I should have, but I honestly thought he understood that we were only friends—nothing more. He knew I was with you, and I never gave him any indication that I was interested in straying from my relationship. I told you before that I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, so in my eyes, at that point he had done nothing to me personally to make me think that he wouldn’t respect any boundaries I had set.

“Now that I know that he doesn’t respect those boundaries, I want nothing to do with him. I gave him the chance to be friends with me, and he broke my trust.” Annie took a deep breath before continuing. “Now going back to us, I thought that what you and I shared was deep enough that you could trust that I am not the type of person to do something like that. I mean, I kinda thought that’s what you liked about me—that I’m a genuinely good person who you can trust, not only as a girlfriend, but as a friend.”

“It
is
one of the things I love most about you, and I’m sorry I didn’t trust you enough to let old feelings go. I know I shouldn’t have compared you to my ex, and I know I shouldn’t have lied about not having a serious relationship before you. It’s just embarrassing, you know? How the whole thing went down. I was ashamed of the fact that I had trusted someone enough to believe she would never do something like that to me. I had trusted her enough to call her my girlfriend and live with her, and she still did that to me. I didn’t want to admit that I had committed to a relationship with someone like that before. I felt like an idiot for letting it happen.”

Leaning forward, Annie placed her hands on his knees and squeezed gently as she looked him directly in the eye. “Casey, you didn’t make her do that. You didn’t make her cheat on you and in your own place that you shared together, of all places.”

“I know, but I should’ve seen what kind of person she was and never asked her to move in with me. I should have never asked her to be my girlfriend.”

“That’s okay, babe. I should have never invited my ex-boyfriend to live with me rent-free all those years ago. We all make dumb mistakes. It’s just life. We meet someone, we get to know them, we learn to trust them, sometimes they disappoint us, and sometimes they don’t. It’s all part of the cycle of life. I don’t think her poor decisions are a reflection of your character.”

“I know… you’re right.” Casey smiled wryly and shook his head. “I guess this guy’s got baggage after all, huh? I never realized exactly how much this shit affected me until now. I’m sorry I’ve put you through so much.”

Annie smiled back and squeezed his knees again, then patted them a few times before withdrawing her hands and folding them in her lap again. “It’s okay, but like I said, this is too much for me to handle right now. You and I both have a dream to pursue, and I don’t think either of us wants to stand in each other’s way. You do what you’ve gotta do to win this thing, and I’ll do what I’ve gotta do. May the best man or woman win. We can figure our shit out later when this is over. Okay?”

There was a long moment before Casey answered, but finally he said, “Okay.” He stood up and smiled down at her, offering a hand to help her to her feet. As she stood, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close in a tight hug. Annie closed her eyes and enjoyed his warm embrace.

She did care about him, and she did wonder what a future with him could hold. But if they did decide to be together, there would be many obstacles for them to overcome. She still didn’t know what to do about Gabe, either. But he was on a plane back to L.A., and now that she had broken things off with Casey, she could focus on winning this competition… what she should have been doing all along.