The air felt like he held his breath, then the quiet sound of his exhale rushed over her ears. “Barlow.”
“We danced around it for a long time, you know, seeing other people but flirting.” Edgy, she dragged a hand through her hair.
“And then you stopped dancing.” His quiet voice was even.
“Yes.” She closed her eyes again, memories flickering through her brain. Scott leaning over in a dim bedroom, intense desire in his blue eyes. Eager hands on her body, the weight of him between her thighs, a pinch of pain disappearing into passion as her body stretched around his, her name on his lips in a rough sigh against her ear. She’d been sohappy, had thought the future was opening up before them. Steeling herself, she straightened. “For a very short time.”
“You didn’t want the same things.”
“No.” She rang a fingernail along the seam of her jeans. She supposed that was one way to explain the way they’d collapsed.
“But you wanted him.”
Blinking against a wave of tears, she glanced up at the night sky, then met his gaze with fierce defiance. “I loved him.”
“Past tense?”
How to articulate the unhealthy tangle of friendship and love and antipathy that had developed between them? They cared, deeply, and wanted, but the resentment and the rigidity of clinging to what each of them wanted poisoned everything. “It’s hard to love someone when you’re not enough for them.”
“I get that.” A hint of humor lightened his tone. “On a very personal level.”
She released a shuddering breath, thankful for the warm shelter of his arm, this private bubble with him. “Anyway, we’ve been dancing around each other for years, and then he decided he was going to marry Andrea because she could be what he wanted.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not.” She held that dark gaze, gentle with concern. “I’ve wasted enough time. I’m never going to be enough for him.”
And now she felt damaged in Colt’s eyes. She didn’t want to keep looking at him, to watch the way he looked at her change, but she didn’t hide. She wasn’t starting now.
“You’re enough. The relationship y’all had wasn’t.” He touched her arm with a single finger, a brief pressure that lingered a moment like a tentative question then flitted away. “You still have feelings for him?”
She grimaced. “It’s complicated.”
“I get that, too.”
Spreading shaking fingers over her knees, she sucked in a deep breath. Up the sidewalk, a young woman called after her group of friends, laughing and carefree in the cool evening. “I understand if you don’t want this with me anymore. I know it’s messy.”
“Messy.” Lips twisted with irony, he shook his head. “Gene says that’s the way life is. The way I see it, he and Louise had a bit of a messy start, her coming out of a bad marriage where she didn’t think she was enough either. Took her a while to come around to him, to them. Worked out all right in the end.”
“It did.” Her voice emerged small and choked, her chest tight with regret and a pained hope. She struggled to grasp a point of normalcy, wanting to recapture their earlier ease. She knuckled under one eye, grimacing at the smear of mascara on her skin. “Hard to believe it took her a while. I’ve seen that photo of young Gene in his uniform.”
“Yeah, he was pretty spiffy—”
“Pretty hot, you mean.” The handsome man in front of her came by those genes honest.
He pinched her arm. “She was afraid of being hurt again.”
“I don’t think you’re going to hurt me.” She brushed her fringe to one side. “I’m afraid I’ll hurt you.”
“Eh, I’m a big boy.” He waffled a hand. “If you hadn’t told me and it had come out somehow, that would’ve pinched and pissed me off. You being honest about this is good.”
“Your.” She sniffled, throat hot and congested. “You need the possessive with that gerund.”
He reached into the inside pocket of the tweed blazer she suspected he’d filched from Mr. Gene’s closet, although the classic looked good on him over a black sweater and jeans. He passed her a starched handkerchief. “You have mascara under both eyes.”
“Thank you.” Smartass. She swiped the smooth cotton under each eye, then blinked at him. “Better?”
Mouth pursed, he took the square and dabbed under her left eye. “There you go.”
