His gaze falls to the floor. His bottom lip sucks between his teeth as he toes his shoe against the concrete. “I don’t remember that line specifically, but I get what you’re getting at.”
He looks up at me, the lines on his face etching into his skin. The water continues to drip in the sink behind him. Each ping of a droplet like a tick of a clock. Each second of our standoff like a fuse being burned.
The air crackles around us, wrought with an awkwardness neither of us can navigate. When I envision this late at night sometimes, I have a lot to say. Now, words seem impossible to articulate.
“You know,” he says, bringing his eyes to mine, “I never got to tell you I’m sorry.”
“I bet you are.”
My response has his hands coming out of his pockets. He looks at me with an arched brow. “You know I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
The fuse has burned through.
“And that makes it all right, doesn’t it? You didn’t mean to hurt me. Gee, thanks, Dane.” With a heated glare, I cross my arms over my chest. “I bet you were thinking that while you screwed Katie. I bet you were thinking, ‘Boy, I hope this doesn’t hurt Neely.’”
“It wasn’t like that.” He growls. “And you know it.”
“I do? How would I know it?” I shake my head, fury singeing my veins. “Because all I remember is how bad it hurt to know you were—”
“We were broken up!”
“Because you broke up with me!” I shout back. Words pour out of my mouth, each syllable coated with so much pent-up emotion it surprises even me. “I thought we’d get back together. I knew it. I . . . loved you.”
Blinking back tears, I step away.
“I loved you,” he says softly. “I . . . You know, I didn’t . . .” His Adam’s apple bobs in his throat. “I didn’t expect for what happened to happen.”
My fists squeeze at my sides as my heart cracks. “You didn’t mean to have a baby with my best friend while we were on a break.”
The words sound wrapped in cotton, but they hit him squarely. His arm flexes like he’s going to reach for me. He doesn’t.
I squeeze my eyes shut to block out the picture of him standing in front of me. All I see is a nineteen-year-old version telling me that my best friend is having his baby followed by visions that have haunted me for so long of him holding a baby that’s not mine. That should’ve been mine. He was mine.
When I open my eyes, he’s in the same spot. Yet somehow, it feels like we’ve been shoved together. The drip of the water echoes through the stillness.
“Neely—”
I hold up a hand. “Like you said the other day, it doesn’t matter.”
“I know,” he says. “It doesn’t. Not really. But I would like to talk it out. Don’t we owe it to ourselves?”
“I owe it to myself to not feel this way anymore.” Running a hand through my hair, I notice the edges are damp from perspiration. “In a couple of days, I’ll be back in New York doing whatever it is I do. You’ll be here playing house or whatever it is you do with Katie and your kid. I mean, if you and she are still talking.” Dropping my hand, I laugh angrily. “Probably not. You probably ruined our relationship for a one-night stand, didn’t you? Good work.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.” He cuts the distance between us in half.
“I know enough to know there’s no reason to let you take me home. You made your choices and I made mine. Now we have to live with them, and I’m just fine with that.”
He works his bottom lip between his teeth, absorbing my words. One of his hands claps against the back of his neck as he tries to release some of the stress in his shoulders. Finally, he shrugs. “You know what? You’re right. Everything happens for a reason, Neely.”
It takes everything I have not to fire back at him that I had to sacrifice my happily-ever-after because he decided to give some other woman a piece of him that was supposed to be mine. My tongue is heavy with questions. I want to demand he explain what reason is good enough to account for my suffering. But I don’t. That will only give him more power. And it doesn’t matter.
“Everything happens for a reason, huh?” I ask. “I don’t know what caused you to sleep with Katie, but that’s your problem. I won in the end.”
His eyes darken. “Careful.”
“Careful?” I laugh. “I’m not the one with a reckless history, bud. You got a kid by a woman you barely even knew, really. I got my dream job in the city. I’d say the end result was favorable to me.”