Sitting around and eating lunch with her is the best part of my day.

This is what drew me to her before—how easy it was to be around her. How often she made me laugh and smile. It wasn’t just the insanely addictive chemistry, although I can’t not think about that too.

Whitney Gable is, by definition, the whole package. Unfortunately for me, she’s also the one who got away. It hammers home exactly how stupid I was back then. I knew what I had, and I lost her.

And then I had her yesterday morning . . . and fucked up again.

She was totally right when she told me she deserved better. She does. She deserves the best I can give her, and I’m going to bring it. No more fuckups. No more mistakes. No more regrets.

One step at a time, I remind myself. I have to take things slowly and earn her trust back. Maybe that was our problem last time. We had one speed, and it was full tilt.

What I want from her isn’t a sprint to the finish—I want the marathon.

I purposely keep things light, and we trade stories as we finish eating our lunch. When I cross the room to toss the empty wrappers in the trash can beneath the desk, scattered pieces of hotel stationery spread out on top of it catch my eye.

They’re covered in her handwriting.

I know I shouldn’t be prying, but I’m hungry for every bit of information I can get about Whitney.

It looks like . . . poetry? Then I remember what Ricky Rango had claimed—she wrote him a love letter.

“Are you a writer?” I ask as I glance over my shoulder at Whitney.

She bolts out of her chair and rushes across the room.

“Oh, God. Don’t look at those. They’re . . . nothing. Really, nothing.” She practically hip checks me out of the way to get to the desk and shuffles the papers together. “I just write stuff. Sometimes.”

“Is that poetry?”

She jerks her head up with a nervous laugh. “Oh, hell no. I’m no poet. I wouldn’t even call myself a songwriter, really. No matter how long I’ve been doing it.”

“A songwriter?” I ask as she clutches the papers to her chest. “You wrote songs? Like . . . for Ricky Rango?”

Whitney takes a step away from the desk. “Does it matter?”

“I’m just curious. I remember . . . I remember he said you wrote him a letter.”

She looks away. “I didn’t write him a letter. He sent me a shitty love song, and I fixed it out of habit and sent it back. That’s what I did for Ricky for years. Fixed his shit. And then he just gave up writing completely . . . and it was all on me.”

She didn’t write him a letter. She fixed his goddamn song. She wrote his goddamned songs.

“That lying piece of shit.” I say it more to myself than her, but Whitney huffs out a breath.