Even if you had to be such a jerk about it.
He smiled a bigger smile while Gabriela stepped out of the room with Thomas. Desmond looked like he was going to follow, but he waited for a moment while the door fell shut before he turned to me. The look on his face was hard to read.
“So we meet again, Ava,” he said in that familiar voice.
Was he smirking? Having a laugh at my expense?
“You’re the CEO of Luxe Hotels?” I asked.
He ran a hand through his hair and nodded.
My head shot up in an instant. “Did you know?” I asked. “When we met at the restaurant? Was that why you stood up for me?”
“No, I didn’t know you were the owner of The Galley.” He stared at me, a conflicted expression crossing his face. “And any decent man would have broken up that date, Ava. No woman should have to put up with such bad behavior.”
We stared at each other in silence. He could afford to be chivalrous now and to pretend like nothing had happened between us in the past. I couldn’t pretend. I took in the grown man before me, the fine suit he wore, and the brightness of a metal watch that occasionally flashed on his wrist.
“We are not a girl and boy in high school anymore,” I said. “I’m not a woman who needs to be rescued from a bad date either.”
He looked up at that. “I hope you aren’t meeting that man again, are you?”
“Not an appropriate question for this meeting, Mr. McKinley.”
He looked like he wanted to argue about it, his lips parting with a protest ready on his lips, when he stopped. He shut his mouth reluctantly and shot me a burning look, where he acknowledged I was right.
His gaze dipped to my neck, and for a second, I thought he was going to give me the once-over.
“You still have the locket,” he muttered, and my fingers instinctively went to the chain locket we’d bought together a long time ago.
Shit.
During one summer, we’d gone to a fair, where Desmond had successfully completed a round of Ring Toss and won a locket for me. Days later, I’d gifted him a personalized key chain with our initials. They were the first gifts we’d gotten each other during our relationship.
Afraid how it must look, I said, “I took out our picture after?—”
“After I gave up on us,” he finished.
That about sums it up.
I nodded.
We had met during the junior prom and dated for more than a year, falling deeper in love every day. We were a perfect complement to each other in many ways. I was the extrovert who attended a lot of events. He liked to play football and hated the limelight. He attended every single event I was a part of, every single dance performance I gave, and never shied away from showing me that he was committed to me. Calm and reliable. That was what I’d thought of him as. He loved video games, and because I had no clue about them, he patiently taught me week after week so that we could play together. Everything seemed perfect—until, in our senior year of high school, Desmond’s mom passed away in a car accident. A head-on collision with a pickup truck.
I thought I’d been understanding and given him space when he needed it and tried to be there for him when he wanted me to. But three weeks later, he told me that he was ending things. And—this hurt even more—he told me that he had been planning to end it with me all long anyway when our last year of high school was up.
I was the fool who had planned our next five years together, including applying to the same colleges he had. All of that had come crashing down around me when Desmond disappeared from my life.
His gaze lingered on the locket for a while before he looked back up at me and nodded. “That makes sense,” he said, his voice dry.
I didn’t want to linger on those memories. But they didremind me what working with Desmond in the next few months was going to be like.
“I can’t work here,” I admitted. “I’ll speak to Thomas about finding a different location for me.”
He walked to sit down on the black leather chair across from me. “Why is that?”
“Because,” I began with conviction before I faltered.
“Because we dated in the past?” he prompted while my cheeks flushed with warmth.
