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“I got it because it symbolizes rebirth. The cycles of life. Transformation. All of that appealed to me after…” He swallowed, dragging his eyes slowly up to her face. “After college.”

“Why?” She held his arm closer, his hand tucked under her own arm, and traced her finger along the flower. Jonathan shivered ever so slightly.

“Do you really want to talk about this now?”

Phoebe really did, but she also knew they shouldn’t. A heart-to-heart about the past, about their feelings, would only lead them down a dangerous path.

“I…”

She stared into his eyes, his arm warm underneath hers, and felt a bead of sweat drip down her chest. She had always felt this magnetic pull toward him—hence all the sitting in his lap she’d done at college parties—but it hadn’t felt quite like this. Right now, she wanted to reach for his other arm and wrap it around her, to crush her chest against his, to press her face into his neck.

It was funny, really, that as close as they’d been during college, they had never kissed. Right now, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world for her mouth to brush against his. She wanted to inhale him.

It was such a sudden, voracious feeling that she blinked and leaned back, startled.

The corner of his mouth quirked up, as though he had seen every thought that had just flitted through her mind. And this made her uneasy. She couldn’t risk letting him know what was going through her head. It just wasn’t worth it. She wanted to keep him in her life. She wanted the business to succeed. She couldn’t make it more than that, no matter how badly a part of her wanted to.

“There you are!” Jonathan’s friends burst onto the patio, bringing the raucous sounds from inside the bar with them. “It’s time for pizza. You coming?”

Phoebe’s chair scraped along the floor as she stood. Jonathan stood, too, scratching the back of his neck uncertainly.

“You go,” Phoebe said. “I need to get some sleep. Lots more work to do tomorrow!”

Jonathan’s eyebrows gave the faintest flick upward. “Right. Okay, then.”

With those three words, Phoebe felt the closeness they had just shared evaporate. Why was she both relieved and desperate to get it back?

“See you tomorrow?”

“Yeah.”

Without so much as a hug, Jonathan turned away and followed his friends.

Chapter 24

Arden

Arden was back on Phoebe’s couch, eating a slice of cookies and cream pie. It was a real luxury, getting pie delivered. She didn’t know if she would be able to go back to wallowing her usual way back home, with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s from the grocery store. Like a peasant.

The thought of wallowing on her own couch at home made tears well in her eyes.

She’d thought her wallowing days were behind her. That was the whole point of the list: She was supposed to learn how to be happy alone. How to respect herself. How to be unbothered by men who didn’t deserve her time.

But she’d slipped up, and she’d given Sam Keller way too much of her time. She hadn’t realized that he was just like all the others. She had really, truly thought that he was different.

As much as she hated to admit it, a small part of her had thought that maybe she’d been destined to go on this trip just to meet Sam. To meet the man she was meant to fall in love with. And they would live happily ever after.

It made her feel ridiculously naive. That wasn’t the way the world worked. Happily-ever-afters weren’t served up on silver platters like the main course at a Christmas-slash-Hanukkah feast. They were elusive and hard to come by—especially for people like Arden. She hadn’t been raised with a model of how a healthy relationship was supposed to work. And she had never learned on her own, choosing instead to waste her emotional energy on men like—

The name Peter Blake flashed across her phone. And it was a FaceTime.

The nerve, honestly. It was late at night back home, and it was still winter break. And he knew that Arden was on vacation.

So maybe it was important.

The ever-present part of Arden’s psyche that simply wanted to be loved and needed suddenly took control of her extremities and answered the phone.

“Hello?”