Page 44 of The Other Plan

“Um. I better not say.”

“It was Jo, wasn’t it?” Her eyes narrowed. “This is payback from me busting her out with Matt.”

“I plead the fifth.”

“I knew it! Ugh! I’m going to kill her.”

“She was just trying to help you.”

“Help me? Busting me out was not helping me.”

I reached for her hand, but she pulled it away.

“Don’t.”

“Jenna. You shouldn’t be embarrassed. I don’t think I’ve ever been more excited to have been lied to before. It killed me thinking you had a boyfriend.”

Her eyes softened as she peered up at me. “I didn’t mean to lie. I just felt so stupid knowing you had a fiancée, and Lydia made me sound like a loser. I just blurted it out, and then... well, you know the rest.”

“I get why you did it. If I’d have heard you were engaged first, I probably would have done the same damn thing. But I’m not engaged anymore, and you don’t have a boyfriend.” I paused to let the reality of our new situation sink in. “We’re both single, and after ten years, we somehow found our way back together.”

I leaned closer to her, hovering over the water separating us. This time she didn’t back away.

“Carter, we can’t.”

“Why? Give me one good reason why we shouldn’t see where this goes.”

“Because we’re different people now. We have very different lives.”

“Not good enough. That’s no reason that we shouldn’t give this a try.”

“I can’t, Carter. We just can’t.”

I reached forward again, sliding my hand along her chin. She closed her eyes for a beat and pressed her cheek into my hand.

“Give me one good reason why.”

After a long pause, she closed her eyes. “Because I fell for you once, and it hurt me.”

“But I didn’t hurt you. I would never hurt you, Jenna.”

“This is hurting me.”

“How? How the hell am I hurting you right now?”

“Because all of this,” she said, waving a hand over me, “lives in New York. If I allow myself to feel for you what I felt for you, I’m just going to end up shattered for a second time. I can’t go through that again.”

“You? You got shattered? You left me. I was the one who could barely eat for a month. It took me years to get over you. Hell, I don’t think I ever fucking did! Do you know that when I bought the ring to propose to Camilla, the face that popped into my mind was yours?”

She looked up from the place on the water she’d been staring at.

“Jenna, you’ve haunted me for a decade. And now you’re here. Right here. And everything that kept us apart before wasn’t real. I didn’t cheat on you. You didn’t just leave me because you didn’t love me. We loved each other, and we have a second chance.”

“We were too young to love each other, Carter. We were just kids. It was... I don’t know. Lust.”

I scoffed at the searing words. “It was a hell of a lot more than lust, and you know it.”

Her face tightened as she closed her eyes for a beat. “Okay. It was more than lust, but...”