“You should be really proud of her. I told him it wasn’t appropriate for him to try to keep talking to her if she didn’t want to. He’s trying to win you over through your daughter.”

“I raised her well.” I grin.

“You have, and don’t you dare forget it.” She takes another sip. “Today was good from what you said.”

I nod. “Very good. I’m just really glad it’s Friday and I don’t have to work tomorrow.”

Pania laughs. “I love you, my friend.”

“Want to sleep over? We can open another bottle of wine.”

She grins. “I like the way you think.”

By the time I crawl into bed, I’m a little drunk and still thinking about Josh. He’s never really left my thoughts, but now he plagues me even if he’s not in the country yet.

But he will be soon.

I can’t just run away from the life I’ve built here, and I refuse to hide.

This could be it—the moment I’ve been dreading for so long.

Five

Josh

I want to broaden my horizons.

That’s what I told my agent, Mac, when I said I wanted to do this movie.

It’s the first movie we’ve fought over in six years.

I hated that it wasn’t an action film, hated the concept, hated the script.

But when you get a call from an old friend who’s convinced that this is her career launching pad, what do you do?

It had the added benefit of filming in New Zealand.

I could have come here years ago to look for Dee, but no amount of searching from the States had turned up anything. She’d simply vanished. It didn’t help that I never got her last name.

It’d been lust at first sight, and me, the lovestruck teenager, had sat in the café where she worked all day every day when I wasn’t auditioning.

Then I had two life-changing things happen in the same week. Dee and I slept together, and I landed the role that set me on a career trajectory that hasn’t dipped since.

But I had no one to share the latter event when she left.

It’s crazy to still be thinking about a girl I spent one night with six years go.

She disappeared the morning after without saying goodbye. She’d was due to fly back to New Zealand the day afterward, but for all I know she is back in the States, living under an assumed name.

So, now I sit in a rental house overlooking a view that I’ve been told ‘will take your breath away’.