Page 12 of Here We Go Again

“Did that really just happen?”

“It did,” she says, “and girl, I’m proud of you, because that man looked good enough to eat. I have no idea how you resisted his dinner invitation.”

I let out a little laugh. “That’s why I resisted his dinner invitation. I can’t trust a man who looks that good.”

“It might make Rory jealous. Nothing like a little competition to make a man up his game and recognize what he’s got.”

I sit up and lift my hands to my cheeks, pressing my palms against my flushed skin. “I don’t want to make Rory jealous. And I don’t think he was asking me out. I think he just wants to apologize.”

She shrugs. “But Rory doesn’t need to know that.”

“Stop it,” I say. “This isn’t about Rory. I just need you to tell me what you think I should do.”

Mia purses her lips to the side, like she’s really considering. “I think you should eat a cheeseburger the size of your face,” she says. “Then you should get some good sleep and see how you feel after you’ve had eighteen hours away from the hospital. If you decide you want to hear him out, then you text him. If you don’t, then you don’t.”

“You made that seem really easy.”

She shrugs. “It is that easy. This is your life. You’re the one in control, and you don’t owe him anything. If you don’t want to talk to him, you don’t have to.”

Control. Right. I am in control. Except … maybe not as much when it comes to Theo. Because for all my carefully crafted boundaries, for all the plans I’ve made to keep myself safe, that man always made me feel like tossing every single rule out the window and leaping into life with my arms wide open.

Which is exactly why I can’t call him.

I already tried it once and look where it landed me.

4

THEO

I have no idea what happened to me. A year ago, I was spending my off-season island hopping through Hawaii with my brother and a couple of our teammates.

Now, I’m sitting on the edge of my brother’s pool wearing inflatable water wings around my wrists like bracelets. His wife’s nieces are making me a crown out of the white clover flowers that have taken over Carter’s yard, so I’m not allowed to move until they’re finished.

I guess the girls are technically Carter’s nieces now too, but his marriage to Sarah is still so new, I sometimes forget about his status as an uncle.

“Just one more,” Poppy says as she carefully ties another flower stem to her ever-growing chain.

“I do one,” Olive says from beside her, but Poppy nudges her little sister away.

“You’ll break it,” she says. She lifts the flowers in front of me. “Finished.”

I tilt my head forward. “All right. Let’s see how it looks.”

Poppy gently drapes the flowers across the top of my head, then takes a step back to assess her work. She folds her arms across her chest, lifting one hand to her chin like she’s giving me very serious consideration.

I press my lips together to keep myself from laughing. The way her mouth is all scrunched up, she looks just like her aunt. Sarah does the same thing when she steps back from the easel to study her work.

“You look very handsome,” Poppy finally declares.

“Thanks, Pops.”

“Girls!” Sarah calls from the patio behind us. “Want some watermelon?”

I lift my arm, making sure Olive doesn’t fall in the pool as she hurries after her sister.

“The water wings are a nice touch,” my brother says as he sits down beside me, dropping his feet into the water. He hands me a beer. “Looks like you finally won them over.”

I chuckle as I wriggle my wrists out of the water wings. On my left hand, the plastic tugs at my scar, and a twinge of pain shoots up my wrist. I massage the area gently, flexing my fingers once or twice for good measure.