He Was Never Shy, Just Not With Me Chapter 05
Only then did his face flash back into
my mind.
[Nora, do you like your birthday present?]
[Work held me up for a few days, but I’m rushing to the wedding venue right now.)
Logan Reynolds rushed home to change his clothes. He felt a faint shift in the atmosphere of the house, but he didn’t dwell on it.
By the time he arrived at the hotel with his relatives, the entrance was lined with carpets and adorned with fresh flowers.
A smile finally broke through the anxiety on his face.
With a light step, he approached a staff member and asked where the bridal dressing room was.
The employee stared back at him with a look of pure suspicion.
“Who are you, and what are you looking for the bridal dressing room for?”
Logan thought to himself that this worker was incredibly unprofessional-she couldn’t even recognize that he was the groom.
Just as he opened his mouth to reply, a sharp shriek cut through the air. It was his mother.
“What is wrong with you people?! This isn’t my son!”
Logan snapped his gaze over, only to realize that both the photo and the names printed on the welcome sign were completely wrong.
He tracked down the manager, his temper flaring in an instant. “How exactly do you run this place?
You managed to get the names of both the bride and the groom completely wrong!”
The manager pulled up the reservation details, looking thoroughly perplexed.
“There hasn’t been a mistake.”
“The previous client cancelled the wedding. After we reassigned the slot to another couple, 1 explicitly made a note of it in the system.”
Confusion immediately followed the rush of anger.
“When exactly was it cancelled?”
“A week ago.”
It was the exact same day I had discovered him at Hailey Brooks’s party.
Logan let out a sharp, bitter laugh.
He immediately dialed my number.
No answer.
He tried again, but it still went straight to voicemail.
Turning to text messaging, he fired off a text, only to see the message bounce back with a red
exclamation point.
He began frantically scrolling through his contacts.
He guessed I had to be with my friends, but after scanning his phone from top to bottom, he
realized he didn’t have a single piece of contact information for anyone in my circle.
At the same time, his friends completed a lap around the hotel and confirmed that I was nowhere to
be found.
“Can any of you get in touch with Nora’s friends?”
The moment the question left his mouth, he froze. He had never even met my friends himself.
How could his friends possibly have their numbers?
A wave of suffocating anxiety sent a sudden dizziness through his head.
He leaned heavily against the wall to steady his balance. As his vision cleared, he spotted Hailey
coming through the entrance with some of their coworkers.
He marched over and grabbed Hailey’s arm, his eyes freezing over. “What exactly did you say to
Nora?”
“I didn’t say anything to her.”
“Then why does Nora bring your name up every single time she fights with me?”
Logan instinctively tightened his grip.
Hailey’s wrist ached terribly from the pressure, and her eyes welled with tears of grievance.
Trembling, she pulled out her phone to prove her innocence.
No matter how many times Logan refreshed the chat log, there was only one photo and a single
accompanying sentence.
{Mr. Reynolds mentioned he’s swamped with work lately and won’t be coming home. Don’t worry.
Nora, I’ll take good care of him for you.]
That was the text message he had instructed Hailey to send me three days ago, right when he was
admitted to the hospital due to sheer exhaustion from working overtime.
He stared at the words, his brow furrowing deep.
His gut told him there had to be more to it than this, but there was absolutely no evidence.
“Think before you speak. What do you mean by ‘take good care of him for you’?”
“You are just my assistant. Remember your place!”
Hailey froze for a moment, her eyes rimmed with red.
“I’m sorry. I’ve always been so clumsy, and I caused Nora to overthink things. I’ll explain it to her
myself. If it comes down to it, I’ll literally go drop to my knees and beg for her forgiveness.”
Logan’s frown deepened.
From the very first moment he laid eyes on her, he knew this girl was entirely too fragile.
He figured someone fresh out of college like her was bound to end up battered and bruised by the
corporate world.
Yet when she stayed up working past midnight, looking utterly pitiful as she texted him, [Goodnight, Mr. Reynolds), his instinct to protect her kicked in hard.
Eventually, he lost himself in the adoration shining in Hailey’s eyes, to the point where he would
readily abandon me just to play the hero for her.
This time was no different; before he could even utter a few harsh words, his heart softened up
again.
“There’s no need for you to beg her. Just focus on your actual job and stay out of trouble.”
Leaving her behind, he peeled out of the parking lot and sped straight home, rushing into the
master bedroom.
The entire way back, he had been fantasizing that I would be sitting on the sofa, laughing as I told him the whole thing was just a practical joke.
Instead, the cold reality hit him: my absolute favorite clothes were missing from the closet.
The vanity table had been completely cleared of makeup.
The only items left untouched in their original spots were the perfumes and jewelry he had gifted
All the strength drained from Logan’s body, and he collapsed onto the floor. Suddenly, his eyes lit
He scrambled over to the trash can and pieced together the shredded fragments of a photo-it was a snapshot of us at the beach from three years ago.
Having grown up in a small countryside village, that trip had been my very first time seeing the ocean. In my excitement, I had thrown my arms around him, locking him in a deep embrace as we
kissed on the sand.
The ocean breeze had been freezing, but because he was there, everything felt utterly perfect/
I told him back then that I wanted to bring him and all my friends back to the beach to watch the
sunset together, and we would all stand in a circle to take a group photo.
That had been my childhood dream.
Taking a deep breath, he figured out a way to win me back.
He scrolled back through his chat history from two years ago, tracked down the name of a specific restaurant, and dialed the number.
“Hello, I’d like to reserve a private dining room.”
