I repeated the words in my head.When you’re in love with someone ...
“You’re saying you love me?” I asked, so stunned I felt as if I had woken up in the wrong body. The wave of doubt he’d started in me about whether the Cohens really cared about me, the cloud of confusion my relationship with Ro had become—and all along it was because helikedme?
“I’m saying I love you,” he said, looking me dead in the eye.
“But when ... how ... why didn’t you say anything?” I stammered. “You’re dating Cassie Clairburne.”
“Because she’ll look twice at me,” he said. “Because she didn’t find out everything about me and then decide I wasn’t good enough.”
“I did not say you weren’t good enough.”
“But you pickedhim.”
“It wasn’t a choice, Ro! Therewasno choice.” I was spitting the words out, but I didn’t even care. “And quite frankly, it sounds like you only decided you liked me when I started dating Luke. Because you’ve always wanted what Luke has.”
Ro laughed. “I’ve always wanted what Luke has?”
“All you ever talk about is how perfect Luke is, how your dad loves him because he’s smart, how your mom loves him because he’s kind. You havealwayswanted what Luke has.”
He glared at me. “So what you’re saying is you don’t know me after all?”
“I don’t know what I know,” I said lamely, my voice less loud this time.
Rowan took a step toward me. “When you say there was no choice—” he said now. “Would it have changed anything if there was? If you saw a choice?”
I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out.
Ro kept walking until he was right in front of me. “Yes or no?”
“Don’t, Ro,” I said, swallowing as he came even closer. “I’m with Luke.”
“Tell me,” he said, ignoring what I had said. “And I’ll never ask you again.”
“I ... I don’t kn—” I barely got the words out before he crushed his lips against mine.
Ten years.
Ten years and I had never considered—not even once—what it would be like to have Rowan’s lips on mine, what it would be like for him to touch me, to want me.
Everything was different with Rowan. It wasn’t as if Luke had never kissed me with passion, but with Ro, everything was passion. Everything was fire and ice. It was scalding, it was freezing. I wanted him to touch me and I wanted him to stop. I wanted his lips, his body, closer, but I wanted to be back at the other side of the lake, not knowing everything I now knew.
We were on our knees in the water, and his lips dropped to my neck and my chest. He pushed my knees apart so more of him could touch me.
And then everything stopped.
We heard voices on the beach and flew apart.
It was Eric and—somehow I knew instantly—Luke, who was staring into the water at us like we were strange, mythical creatures.
His name poured out from my mouth, the same mouth that had been kissing Ro seconds before, but he turned and started back up the path he and Eric had come down.
“Luke!” I raced out of the water and sprinted, but he wouldn’t stop. I ran back to the beach for my clothes, then took off after him again, but by then all I saw were trees. Shadows and night.
Eric came up behind me then, and I screamed at him, “Where did he go?”
“He parked on the other side of the trees, and then we cut through ...”
He was talking too slowly, and I took off running again.
