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Usually I could forget my problems when I was dancing, but not tonight. Dancing reminded me of Levi. And Frank was way too handsy for me. I kept removing his hands from my ass as we swayed to the music. After an hour of pretending like my entire world hadn’t just been turned on its head, I excused myself and ordered a cab.

“You’re leaving?” Frank’s hot, beer-tainted breath hit my ear and I recoiled. It’s not like he wasn’t good looking. He was gorgeous, but the moment had passed. There would be no mindless hookup tonight. Those cobwebs that were currently decorating my lady parts would just have to stay there.

I gathered up my things, resentful that once again the specter of Levi had gotten between me and another guy. As if it wasn’t enough that I’d spent all my teenage years dreaming about him, when I did start to date, I’d never felt fully invested or fully satisfied in relationship because the guy wasn’t Levi. If anything, that should have made me want to hook up with Frank even more. But it didn’t. All I wanted was to get out of there.

“Sorry, I’m not feeling well,” I said as I pushed away from him. Ignoring his offer to drive me back home, I got into my cab and slunk down into the seat, fighting back tears. It took forever to get back to the small apartment I shared with Sabrina on the outskirts of Treviso. Once inside, I showered, letting scalding hot water run over me. But I couldn’t get him out of my mind. I needed to talk with someone about what had happened and so I called the only person who would understand.

Ashleigh picked up after the first ring. “Deedee! Oh my god, I can’t believe you’re actually calling me. This is a first!”

“Surprise!” I tried to sound more chipper than I felt. It was true that she was usually the one to reach out to me, mainly because I was always her sounding board for all her personal problems, which were a lot these days. “How are things?”

“Gawd, don’t ask. You remember how I told you that Carlton had a business trip to DC? Well, he just called to tell me he’s staying longer. He knows I’m hosting a dinner party tomorrow. What will all the other wives think?” Ashleigh lived in Savannah now with her husband who worked in finance. He’d told me multiple times what he did, but I was incapable of explaining it. As far as I was concerned, he moved very wealthy people’s money around until he made them even more money. Ashleigh had met Carlton her senior year at college. She’d left Levi for him and had given up modeling to become a housewife and now lived in a leafy neighborhood in Georgia where she was pretending to be a Southern belle.

“Why don’t you just reschedule?” I suggested and then immediately regretted it when she launched into a litany of reasons why that was impossible—florist and caterers were booked and so was the highly sought after singer she’d managed to snag months ago. Not to mention all the nannies that the other mothers had surely hired for the evening.

“Anyway, what’s up with you? Find any old skeletons in that burial site?” Ashleigh finally asked.

“Well, um, actually, I did unearth a skeleton of sorts.” I hesitated. Was I really going to tell her this? “Levi. He’s here. In Italy.”

“Levi? My Levi?” she asked. I had to bite my tongue not to say something mean. It irked me even after all these years to hear her refer to him as hers. Especially after what she’d done to him. But, at the same time, he certainly wasn’t mine. After our meeting tonight, that had never been clearer. “Goodness, what’s he doing there?”

“He’s based at Aviano.”

“Wow!” She went silent, and I wondered if she still had regrets about rejecting his proposal all those years ago. “Did he mention me?”

I breathed deeply. She would make this all about her. “No. We exchanged like five words. He practically ran away from me.”

“Gosh, I would have thought after all these years, he would’ve gotten over me. That’s obviously not the case.”

“Okay, not exactly the conclusion I drew from our interaction.” I still didn’t know what to make of what had happened. “I barely recognized him.”

“Why? Is he bald? I always wondered if he was going to keep all that hair. It was almost too pretty for a boy.”

“No, he still has all his hair.” God, that hair. How many times had I imagined curling my fingers through it? I closed my eyes and the image of him leaning over me, a thick lock of hair on his forehead, his ocean eyes intent on me, jaw muscles flexing, and that sexy cleft in his chin. My thighs tightened at the memory of his muscled forearms on the bar, the way his biceps strained against his shirt. “He looked the same just more . . . manly.”

“More manly?” Ashleigh whispered.

“Yeah, like his voice was gruffer and he’s packing a lot more muscle. He has a lot more . . . girth or something.”

“Girth? Just how much of him did you see, Deedee?” Ashleigh sounded annoyed. I suppose I had been rubbing it in.

“It doesn’t matter. It’s just . . . well, afterward one of my friends was going on about how he had a reputation as a local lady-killer. And it surprised me. I mean, he wasn’t like that before.”

Ashleigh snorted. “I’ll say he wasn’t! He only had eyes for me, if you remember.” Oh, I hadn’t forgotten. When Ashleigh was in the room that’s all he could see. “Oh god, Carlton is calling. I have to get this. We’ll talk later?”

“Sure,” I mumbled, but she had already hung up. I should have known that she wouldn’t have made me feel any better about my weird run-in with Levi. I was always giving Ashleigh the benefit of the doubt, even if she’d proven time and again that she didn’t deserve it.

Too wired to sleep, I pulled out some of the old photos I kept in a box near my bed. The first one was the four of us. Levi in the middle, his arms wrapped around Ashleigh and Josh. I was off to the side, looking at them and pretending to smile. That familiar dull ache started in my chest. The one that had kept me company from the time Levi first chose someone else.

Ashleigh was right. They were the ones with the relationship. Not me. I was just an awkward bystander, the pathetic little sister who spent years missing a boy that had never given her a second thought. The boy who couldn’t run away from her fast enough.

I stuffed the photos back in the box, determined for once in my life to stop thinking about Levi Jasinski.

Chapter 5

Levi

“Dude, I was wide open! Why didn’t you pass?” Gonzo yelled as he pounded over the field to help me up from the nosedive I’d taken after a spectacularly bad attempt at running the ball through midfield. There was no excuse for my shitty play other than the fact that I’d barely slept last night, haunted by memories of Josh and by visions of Indy’s stricken face when I walked out of that bar.