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Jewel crossed her legs, gave a gentle tug on the hem of her skirt. Fidgeting.
She drew in a slow breath, then said, “I didn’t exactly get around to telling him the reason for my visit. I just couldn’t do it. Turns out, I wasn’t ready to tell him about us. I wasn’t ready to sever the ties with him. But I considered myself yours, Vin. Yes, Rogen kissed me. And yes, I let him. And yes, I spent the night in his bed in his dorm room. But nothing happened. I lied and said I was on my period. We didn’t have sex.”
“Wasn’t that nice of you. Quite the sacrifice.” He unhooked his belt and stood. Stepped into the aisle and paced while sucking down his scotch. The sting of the alcohol didn’t override the sting of her betrayal, though. Even if that betrayal wasn’t as horrific as he’d initially thought when he’d received Rogen’s e-mail and Vin had been convinced they were seeing each other—sleeping with each other—and lying to him, it still grated.
Because she hadn’t been able to tell Rogen about them.
Jewel got to her feet and faced Vin. Tears crested the rims of her eyes as she said, “I know what I did was wrong. I know I’m the reason we broke up. Now I know it, that is. Back then … I had no clue as to why you ditched school that last week. Why you stood me up for prom. Why you didn’t attend graduation. All I knew was that you’d totally wrecked me.”
“That wasn’t how I saw it.”
“You could have talked to me about Rogen’s e-mail,” she asserted. “You could have given me a chance to explain. You still would have been pissed—and you would have had the right. But maybe you wouldn’t have been angry enough to leave. Maybe you would have understood. Maybe you would have stayed. Like you’d always promised you would.” More drops tumbled down her cheeks.
“Low blow, Jewel,” he ground out, his insides twisting over her tears. “I did make promises to you. Ones I broke. But consider that knowing you went back to Rogen wrecked me.”
With a slight nod, she said, “I understand that now.”
His eyes squeezed shut.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
All that agonizing for both of them over nothing.
Well. Almost nothing.
Her voice cracked a little as she told him, “I was so excited to see you on prom night. More than that—I couldn’t wait to see you. I was ready an hour before you were supposed to pick me up.”
His lids snapped open. “You were never on time when I picked you up, let alone early.”
She grinned, despite the tears. “I told you. I couldn’t wait to see you.”
He drained his glass. Deposited it in an armrest holder.
Jewel said, “It wasn’t just a dance for me, Vin. We were graduating. We’d made plans. It was a rite of passage we were supposed to share. The ending of one of our lives and the beginning of another. It wasn’t a prom for me. It was like … our wedding.” She sobbed on a hollow laugh. “My dress was white.”
“Jewel.”
Christ, could she grip his heart any tighter? And if he caved to her, as he almost always did, would she rip it from his chest again?
Vin didn’t know. There never seemed to be answers to all the tumultuous questions. So he did the only thing he could think of doing. He closed the gap between them in two wide strides and pulled her into his arms. Held her firmly. Let her cry. Let her apologize. Let her tell him how much she’d cared about him, how much she’d missed him.
Because deep in his soul, those were all the things he wanted to say.
* * *
Rogen returned to the cabin just as Vin embraced Jewel. He grunted.
On the one hand, he really did have a hard time seeing her in another man’s arms. Yet Rogen would prefer it was his best friend over anyone else.
And he had a feeling Vin and Jewel had finally hashed out the whole end-of-senior-year trauma. That was a good thing, he’d allow. Too much time had passed for them to not have reconciled.
It was similar to the Angelini–Catalano family feud. Fifteen years was a long span to hold a grudge over misconstrued or even misguided intentions. Even Rogen and Vin hadn’t held anything against each other when it’d come to Jewel. Not after that summer Vin had gone off on his own, then joined Rogen at college, acting as though nothing had ever happened. Just saying that he’d come to the conclusion that Yale was the place for him, not SFSU. End of story.
Rogen returned to his seat since he’d ironed out a few wrinkles with the Italy operations. Melinda h
ad poured a scotch for him and he’d sipped while Vin consoled Jewel.
It was a past pain between Vin and Jewel that deserved a private moment to work through. Rogen could respect that.
