“Peyton,” Korbin said again, and I could feel him staring at me, silently begging me to look at him. “Talk to me,” he said. “Tell me what you’re feeling.”
I laughed bitterly at that, abandoning the food in front of me to go to the fridge and grab a beer. I didn’t offer one to Korbin, and he didn’t ask. He merely watched me cross the room and sit back down with a bottle of beer in my hand. I popped the top and took a long drink, then set it down and looked at him.
“What am I feeling?” I repeated. “I guess, Korbin, I’m feeling like I’m horrified with myself for falling for you twice, and getting my heart stomped on just as many times. I feel like I’m nothing at all to you, and not the woman you almost married. I feel like I deserve better than you give me, and yet somehow I can’t stay away from you. I hate myself for it.” I shook my head and focused my eyes on the beer bottle in front of me so I wouldn’t have to look directly at him.
Korbin was silent for a moment as the words sank in, and for a long moment I wasn’t sure he was going to say anything at all to this. But when he did speak, his voice was different. The cocky confidence was gone, and for a second he almost looked …human.
“The moment I met you, I knew you were different,” he said. “I remember seeing you walking with your friend that day on campus. You were laughing at something she had said, and you threw your head back when you laughed. I was taken with you, right then and there. I’d never in my entire life felt for someone like I felt for you that day.”
I dropped my eyes from Korbin’s face, wrapping my hands around the beer as the memories flooded me. I remembered that day, too.
“You walked up and introduced yourself,” I said with a nod. “My friend Megan almost fainted, I swear. She thought you were so cute.”
“But I couldn’t keep my eyes off you,” said Korbin, and I nodded.
“You had no problem making it clear, either. You weren’t afraid to hurt feelings, even then.” I smiled slightly to show him I was kidding, but Korbin didn’t laugh.
“I knew what I wanted,” he said. “I wanted you.”
I nodded and focused again on the beer bottle, raising it to my lips to take another drink. Korbin watched me do this, then he got up and got himself a beer from the fridge, popping the cap to take a long drink before he sat back down across from me.
“I felt like the luckiest girl in the world,” I said softly. “I couldn’t believe that a handsome, distinguished man like you could possibly have any interest in a dull, boring girl like me.”
“Dull and boring?” Korbin repeated. “You were—and are—anything but, Peyton. You are one of a kind.”
“That’s certainly how you made me feel while we dated,” I told him. “I—I didn’t think that things would ever end between us, Korbin. I thought we were soulmates.”
“So did I,” he said gently, reaching his hand across the table to rest it on top of mine. A buzz of anticipation traveled through me, and I yanked my hand away, angry that even now, even after all the heartache, he still managed to make me feel weak and vulnerable.
“If you ever truly thought that, you wouldn’t have left me,” I whispered, folding my arms over my chest protectively. “Soulmates don’t abandon each other.”
“I know.”
“They fight through it; they stick by each other when no one else will.”
“I know.”
“Do you, though?” Shaking my head, I emptied the last of the beer in the bottle and got up to toss it into the garbage can, going to the fridge for another. I wanted to yell at him, scream, even, but I didn’t. I couldn’t always be the one to lose my cool.
“My father’s death ruined everything for me,” he said softly, and now it was Korbin who was having a difficult time looking at me. “I never thought I’d lose him, Peyton, and when it happened I felt like the entire world stopped. He—he was the strongest man I’ve ever known, and I grew up watching him take care of his family. And then—and then he died, just like that. He died doing the one thing that I had looked forward to doing my entire life. Firefighting.”
“I know it was hard,” I murmured. “Your father was a good man. But—” I looked down at my hands and shook my head with a small sigh. “But losing your dad was no reason to lose me. You made that decision.”
“I was scared, Peyton.”
“So was I, Korbin.” I looked at him then, forcing him to meet my eyes. “We were both scared, and instead of leaning on each other, you ended things. I’ve had a really hard time forgiving you for that.”
“As you should.”
“And then when I saw you the second time, that day in the lobby of the clinic. I thought, what are the chances that after all these years I’d run into him again?”
“Slim.”
“But I did. And I tried, Korbin, I tried to get reassigned so we wouldn’t have to do this again. Because I knew that if I let it happen, I’d fall for you just as hard, if not harder, than I did the first time. And that terrified me.”
“I know.”
“Do you? Because when it happened the first time …” I took a breath, shaking my head before I could face him again. “It ruined me. I—I lost myself for a long time, Korbin. It wasn’t pretty. You had left me. Abandoned me. And you’re all I knew. All I’d ever known.”
