“It’s okay. I’m not in love with you either. I think more than anything I was in love with the perfect idea of being married and settled. It’s what we’re supposed to do, right? Get the promotion, the wife, have the kids, move to the suburbs. I always thought that was the goal.”
She had, too. She’d thought moving on meant loving someone other than Luke. “And now? What do you want now?”
“Honestly?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He cocked his head slightly. “I want to find someone who looks at me the way Luke looks at you. Someone who I’d be willing to stop a wedding for.”
Rowan clenched her teeth and looked up at the ceiling to keep more tears from falling.
“Have you talked to him since then?”
“Yes.” She sniffed and wiped under her nose. “He followed me up to Claudia’s parents’ cabin.”
“How did he follow you? He was still talking to the police when I left the church.”
“Maria had one of her feelings and gave him directions.”
Michael scooted back on the couch. “Isn’t that how we met in the first place? One of Maria’s feelings?”
“As a matter of fact, it is. It was at that horrible art gallery opening she dragged me and Claudia to.”
He chuckled. “That was some pretty horrific art. Who knows…maybe her feeling then was supposed to move to this feeling now and you’re right where you’re supposed to be.”
“Kind of a screwed-up place to be.”
“Yeah.” They sat in silence for several seconds. “How did it end with you two? You’re here. Did you leave him buried in a shallow grave behind the cabin?”
“Worse,” she said. “I left him at one of those roadside inns on the highway.”
He crossed a leg over the other knee. “So that’s it?”
It should be, but Luke’s offer was on repeat in her head like an annoying children’s song that, once heard, could never be unheard.
“It’s—He—I don’t know. He asked me to go to Nashville.”
“You have the time off.”
“That’s what he said.”
“Are you going to go?”
“I’m not sure what good it would do,” she admitted.
“Maybe you’ll figure out a way to be together. Maybe you’ll find out you can’t stand him. But at least then you’d know.”
But did she want to know?
“Can I ask something?” he asked.
“Of course.”
“Why did you two really break up? All you ever said was that you wanted different things.”
She swallowed hard. Years of distance didn’t make the story hurt any less. Taking a deep breath, she said, “When he first signed his recording contract, it was right at the tail end of the bad-boy country singer craze. You know—a little rough around the edges, but with the hint that the right woman could put them on the straight and narrow.”
Michael shrugged. He’d never listened to country music so he probably had no idea what she was talking about.
