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“
Yeah, I heard this is fiancé number two for you. You really got cheated on?”

“Brandon has a big mouth. I might have to kick his ass.
And yes, I got cheated on. She apparently liked her ex-boyfriend more than she liked me.”

He was playing it off, but I could tell he was more affected by what had happened than he led on. But since I could tell he didn’t want to dwell on such unpleasantness, I decided to help him out
and change the subject.

“
Brandon does have a big mouth, but that’s what I love about him. He’s so brutally honest. You don’t get that from most people.”

He smiled at me
. “No, you don’t.”

I smirked slightly as I appraised the suddenly playful look on his face
. “I wonder what that feels like.”

I watched him almost do a spit-take with his beer
. “Seriously? You’re asking what being brutally honest feels like, Ms. ‘I don’t give a shit about what anyone thinks about me’? Come on.”

My mouth dropped open in mock offense
. “I am not that carefree, and you know it,” I defended. “How many times did I cry on your shoulder in high school because those whores I used to call friends said something bitchy to me?”

He cocked his head at me
. “Yeah, but you never let them see you cry. You were always tough as shit whenever anyone else was looking.”

I eyed him
pensively, not sure I loved how well he still knew me, but a warm feeling spread throughout my body. And then my guard was suddenly up. Damn him for still being able to affect me like that.

“You wer
e the only person I ever let in,” I said softly and then changed tactics, knowing I had no choice. I had to protect myself. “But a lot of shit happened to me back then, and I didn’t know how to deal with it. Now I’ve learned how to deal, and I’ve developed a thick skin. Now I don’t let people hurt me.”

And suddenly it was like the air had changed. We’d been playful and fun loving, but now it was like we’d turned a corner,
and our past that we’d wanted so badly to bury was staring us in the face, and we couldn’t look away.

“I thi
nk that’s pretty incredible,” Ryan said softly, and I watched his eyes drift to the star tattoos running down the side of my neck.

And all I could think was that I didn’t want him looking at me like that. I didn’t want him to dredge up the old feelings that he
was surfacing, I didn’t want him to remind me of how safe and secure I’d felt with him, and I sure as hell didn’t want to remember what it was like to have my heart ripped out of my chest. And that was exactly what he was doing in that moment.

“You
don’t like my tattoos, do you?” I suddenly accused, not sure why I was going that route.

“Se
e. Brutally honest,” he responded, smiling at me.

“
It’s fine, Ry,” I said, swallowing hard when I realized I’d inadvertently used his nickname.

“What’s fine?” he
asked, looking confused.

I blinked as he
appraised me, and I hated that it felt like he was looking directly into my freaking soul.

“That you don’t like my tats
, my décor, my art,” I answered smartly, because I had to drive him away, and I had to drive away the feelings that were starting to overtake me. “You don’t have to like them. It’s cool. They’re not for you or anyone else, and I like them.” And then I decided to shove the knife in deeper and twist, as I changed the subject on him. “Tell me about getting dumped. That must have sucked.”

“Uh,
yeah. It sort of did,” he answered, looking completely bewildered with how the tables had turned without warning.

Well, that was how I’d felt when he went away on vacation and sent me a freaking email to break up with me
and tell me to kill off our baby. Asshole.

“She cheated on you?”
I prompted.

“Yes,”
he answered, shifting uncomfortably on his stool. “I already confirmed that.”

“A lot?”

“I don’t know. Besides, it doesn’t matter. Once is enough, don’t you think?”

Yeah, once was enough. And if I didn’t get away from him soon, I might be in danger of causing him to do something once that he’d regret, and I couldn’t live with myself if I did that. And it wasn’t just because he was engaged.

“I agree,” I told him. “So what are you doing out having drinks with me when you have a fiancé?”

“I thought I was catching up with an old friend, but I’m thinking I might have been wrong.
Besides, Trish knows where I am.”

I laughed a
non-humorous laugh and looked away. “I think this was a bad idea,” I said, shaking my head. “I think I’m going to go ahead and go. It was nice catching up, but I think the next time I see you, I’m just going to look the other way.”

“But you’re coming to my wedding,” he said slowly, looking thoroughly flummoxed.

“No, I’m not. I hate to do it to Brandon since he’s a nice guy, but I just can’t be around you, Ryan. I can’t do it. You hurt me so bad in high school, and I thought I was past it, but I’m not. Good luck in your marriage. I hope she treats you well. Have a nice life.”

It was probably the worst exit line I could have said. It was so clichéd, but it was all I could come up with before I dropped a twenty on the bar to cover my drinks and walked away from Ryan Carson for good.

* * *

“He got under my skin,
Kel,” I said angrily, as I collapsed on her couch. “He sat there looking all beautiful and perfect, and he
got in
.”

She eyed me pensively as if wanting me to go on, but I wasn’t sure what else I could say on the subject. I was spinning, reeling, floundering, and it was all because of Ryan Carson, a guy I thought I’d dismissed from my memory and vowed to not let affect me again.

But he was affecting me now.

Shit!

“Tell me what happened,” she said slowly, as if coaxing me to let it all out once she realized I wasn’t going to do it voluntarily.

I took a deep breath. “He got to the bar, and he was so nice to me, and it reminded me of how we were back then. He was sweet and funny, and I had built him up in my mind to
be a complete martyr, but he wasn’t. He even told his fiancé that he was meeting me for drinks. He was completely honest with her, and he’s dealt with his share of shit over the past decade, and I can’t hate him because of what happened when we were kids. I can’t do it anymore. He’s not a bad person. He’s so . . . I don’t know . . . he’s Ryan.”

I shook my head, having rambled off enough confusing things that I wasn’t sure Kelly would be able to make heads or tails of any of it.

“What does that mean?”

I sighed. “It means that in my heart, he’s still the boy who loved me when everyone else abandoned me. He’s the guy who took my virginity and kissed away my tears when someone had hurt me and who told me I was beautiful when I thought I was hideous and unlovable. He meant the world to me, and I have never felt what I felt for him since then. I’ve never met a guy who could make me feel as safe and secure and
as loved as Ryan did for two years. And in one second, he ripped that all away because he was scared, and I never forgave him for it. I let that one moment discolor all the amazing things about him, and that was probably wrong.”

“But, Harper, it
was
a pretty big thing for him to do. You said so yourself, just last week.”

I shook my head. “I have a feeling his parents influenced him. I have no doubt that his dad capitalized on the fact that they’d be alone on that boat for a week and talked him into telling me to get an abortion. And if his dad hadn’t been able to influence him, I’m sure his mother finished him off. They were vindictive people back then, and it sounds like they haven’t changed, but
Ryan was only eighteen. And he respected his parents and looked up to them and valued their opinions. And the truth was that neither of us wanted to have a baby. We wanted to go to Yale and enjoy college together, but all of a sudden, I was pregnant, and that was that. And maybe he was looking for a way out. I don’t know.”

“
Did he ask about Tyler?”

I shook my head
. “No, he didn’t ask about him, which surprised me, but at the same time I definitely wasn’t prepared to talk about him tonight, so I’m sort of glad he didn’t bring him up.” I let my head fall back against the couch. “I don’t know, Kel. I was not planning for him to walk back into my life, and now my head is spinning with all of this crap I tried to bury.”

“So, are you saying you still have feelings for him?” she asked, and my head snapped up to look at her.

“No,” I said definitively, and then I adjusted my response. “I mean, not really. It’s just, sitting there with him, I was sure as hell tempted in a physical sense, but what scares me more is that I realized that I couldn’t hate him any longer.”

She cocked her head to the side and watched me for a few moments before she started speaking. “But didn’t you go there tonight with
the expectation to gain closure, to let the past go, to move on?”

I froze for a second. “Yeah, I did.”

“Well, did you get it?”

“I don’t know,” I sighed, letting out a breath of air in a huge huff. “I think I expected one thing, and I got another, and it threw me for a loop.”

“What did you expect?”

“To catch up with an old friend, to
know that what happened between us was for the best, and to finally bury the hatred I’d been harboring for so long. To let him go, I guess.”

“But that’s what happened. Harper, I’m really confused. I’m sorry,” she said, wringing her hands together.

I sighed. “Here’s the thing. I expected to be able to let go of how I’d felt for so long, and I wanted that, I truly did. But what I didn’t plan for was actually enjoying being with him and missing him and wanting to hang out with him again.”

“So you did feel something,” she deduced, and I shook my head.

“I felt connected to him. I can’t explain it, but I felt like I was missing a part of myself, and when he came back into my life, it was like I felt whole for the first time in years. But I don’t have
feelings
for him, I just sort of don’t want to lose him again. Does that make sense?”

“So, you want to be friends with him?” she questioned, her eyes narrowing as she tried to make heads or tails of what I was saying.

“Yeah, I think I do.”

“Well, where did you leave it with him?”

I cringed. “I basically told him to fuck off and have a nice life.”

“Harper!”

“What?! He blindsided me. I didn’t know what to do.”

I slumped further into the couch.

“Well that certainly puts a wrench in things,” she said, stating the obvious, so I glared at her.

“Here’s the
deal. He’s getting married in a few weeks. It’s so stupid that I would even want to be friends with him, because what wife is going to let her husband hang out with a woman whom he used to sleep with, especially when she learns the full story. And he works like all the time, so I don’t even know if he has a social life, but he’s friends with Brandon, so I’ll see him from time to time. Shit, I don’t know.”

“Who’s Brandon?” she asked, and I realized that I’d been talking to Brandon pretty regularly since we’d met the week before,
and I hadn’t even told my friends about him.

I smiled. “Brandon is this guy who basically wormed his way into my life, and I think he’s going to be a really good friend. I met him on the plane
back from Boston, and we talked the whole flight, and then he came in for a tattoo, and that’s how I ran into Ryan again. They’re friends, and Ryan was going to get a tattoo as well. And you know the rest of that story – vomit, push him away, come vent to you about it, see him at the deli, accept coffee date. But Brandon is this brutally honest, sort of broken guy who got divorced last year, and I think he’s still trying to pick up the pieces. He bought a winery and is moving out here, and I’m his date to Ryan’s wedding.”

Of course I told Ryan I wasn’t going now, so that might not be true.

“Are you dating him?”

I shook my head. “No, there’s not really an
attraction there. He’s cute, but he’s not really my type.”

She laughed. “So he doesn’t wear pressed khakis, button-down shirts and loafers
?” she teased, and I glared at her.

“You completely suck,” I told her, but she was right, and I hated that she was right. I wished I didn’t like preppy guys – guys like Ryan.
Grr.

“But he’s hot?” she prompted.

I nodded. “Yeah, he is, and he’s a good guy. I actually wish I had someone I could set him up with. He needs a nice girl who he can trust.”

“You’re a nice girl,” she offered, and I
shook my head. She was trying really hard to change my mind.

“We’re friends, Kelly,
” I said firmly.