And what do you know now? I don’t want to push her, so I continue unpacking and wait for more.
“Heath had a revolving door of women in his life when I met him, but we hit it off. I liked him. But after a couple of weeks, I knew I couldn’t be one of many, and I told him if we were going to keep seeing each other, he had to stop seeing everyone else. Rich encouraged me to have that talk with him. He said Heath was the kind of guy who’d need it spelled out, but I’m not sure he was giving Heath enough credit. He was young and single, not an ass. It didn’t take much convincing. And after that . . . we fell in love fast and hard. He was romantic and sweet, and so damn good in bed.”
I grunt. I don’t want to think about another man physically pleasing her.
“Not that bedroom skills are required for a relationship, of course,” she says quickly.
“Of course.”
“My family accepted him, but Rich was always around, and he always found ways to look better than Heath. At first, I didn’t think he was doing it on purpose. Rich knew my family from the years we’d been together in high school, and he stayed close to them after I left. He’d know Mom needed help getting the salt to the basement for the water softener, and of course he’d remember how much she loved to get lilies at Easter.” She releases a small huff of air. “I guess I can’t really talk about Heath without talking about Rich, and that was always the problem. The harder I fell for Heath, the more my family wanted to see me get back together with Rich.”
“Why?”
She hangs another dress, taking her time before responding. “Rich has a way of twisting things—making people look bad for nothing without straight-out lying. I know this sounds crazy, but I need you to promise me now that you won’t let Rich get to you. He might try to be your buddy or he might just be an ass, but whatever he does, he’ll be trying to manipulate you.”
“Is that what he did to you?”
She shrugs. “He’d call my mom after Heath and I had a silly spat and ask if I was around because he was worried about me. She’d have to pry it out of him, but he’d admit that Heath and I had been fighting or that I’d been upset or that Heath hadn’t done something I asked. He had a way of turning nothing into something awful, and a way of making my mom hold on to the idea that he and I might get back together.”
“But was it bad? You and Heath? Do you think you could have been happy with him if . . .” If he hadn’t died. I swallow, wishing I could take it back and feeling like a jackass for asking at all.
“No,” she says tightly. “We couldn’t have. And that was my fault.”
The guilt in her voice sets off warning bells in my head. “How so?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t want to talk about it. I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s fine.” I force myself to give her a reassuring smile. “I didn’t mean to push.”
She lifts her gaze to meet mine. “What about you? Serious relationships, I mean.”
I groan. I guess I’m the one who brought it up. “I had a girlfriend for a couple of years in high school. Her name was Marjorie and we were pretty happy, but we kind of grew apart.” I haven’t thought about her in a long time, but the memories are mostly good ones. Marjorie was my first love . . . my first all-around. “Then lots of dating, lots of searching for that elusive the one.”
“Did you ever think you found her?”
My gut knots when I think of Renee. We weren’t together long in the scheme of things, but I’d thought she was it for me. “I dated a woman named Renee when I first started at the fire department. My dad was sick, and she was the one who was there for me. We dated for six months.”
Teagan cocks her head, frowning. “Renee French? The one who runs the yoga studio by the bar?”
I grimace. For better and worse, Jackson Harbor is a small world. “That’s her.”
“What happened? Why’d you break up?”
“She didn’t want what I did, and she found lying about it easier than honesty.” I shrug. As if it’s nothing. As if losing her wasn’t like having the earth yanked from beneath my feet while my world was falling apart around me. I hate being lied to. “But really, I’ve never had a long-term, serious relationship. Ethan says I’m too damn picky and I should stop looking for Miss Perfect.”