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“Did he ask you for another chance, Mel?”
Mel swallowed. “He wants a chance to be in the kid’s lives,” she stammered.
“Right,” he said softly, and his dark eyes nearly pierced into her soul. “But did he tell you he wanted another chance with you?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Blake laughed, the sound dry and brittle like rustling leaves, then he dropped her hands and stepped away. “I’m afraid it might.”
“What he wants is irrelevant.”
“But it’s not, Mel,” Blake snapped, losing his composure for the first time since they started to talk. “Don’t you see? What he wants matters when you don’t even know what you want.”
“I want—”
“Don’t say you want me. You can’t possibly say that when he’s come back into your life and you’re not even sure how you feel about him. And the problem is, Mel, that I care too much about you to just stand by and watch you slowly fall back in love with him, slowly forgive him and learn to trust him again. I can’t do it. I can’t be with you while you’re only half in. I’d be constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, always feeling like an outsider, and I was already in a relationship like that.”
“We’re different,” she said, stabbing him in the ribs. “Or at least you said we were.”
“You’re right. What I feel for you is different. We’d be different because we’re actually right for each other. Because I desperately want the life I could have with you.” His voice cracked. “Not just now or tomorrow or the next day, but every day, forever.”
Mel’s eyes widened. She took a step back until the back of her legs hit the bed. Did he just say. . .
“I should go.”
Mel blinked. “Will you still come tonight?”
Blake turned and shook his head. “You’ll have plenty of people there for a buffer. “I’ll see you Monday morning,” he said. “Our last week.” And then he left.
MEL TOLD CRAIG SHE’D meet him on the street corner just outside The Consoler, but she had half a mind to skip the party altogether. Ever since Blake left her apartment, she’d been a mess of tears and nerves. How could everything in her life be so right one minute, then go so wrong the next?
She kept replaying their conversation in her head over and over, if only to torture herself, analyzing it from every angle as if it might somehow change things. Why had she let Blake go so easily? She couldn’t wrap her head around it. For weeks, she sat idly by, slowly falling for him. The start of her day and when she got home were her two favorite times because it meant seeing Blake. With every conversation, every laugh, look, and touch, she had grown to love him more. Yet she let him go without much of a fight.
It wasn’t about this stupid party, though she saw his point. The real problem was that she couldn’t say the one thing he needed to hear—that she wasn’t still in love with Craig. Had she told him she had no feelings for Craig and there was no chance of ever allowing him back into her heart, he’d be by her side at that very moment, of that she was convinced, Craig or no Craig. Yet she couldn’t even give him that. Why?
“Hey.” The sound of Craig’s voice broke through Mel’s thoughts.
“Where are the kids?” he asked, eyeing the area around her for them.
She hooked a thumb toward the hotel. “One of my coworkers is entertaining them with punch and cookies inside.”
His face crumpled in relief. He didn’t ask where Blake was because Mel had failed to mention he would be there with her. Yet another red flag. Why hadn’t she told Craig she had a date? Maybe Blake was right, and she was holding back. The question was, Why?
“Ready?” she asked, shaking her thoughts free.
“More than ready.” Craig sidled up next to her, and they entered the hotel together.
By the time they entered the hall where the party was to be held, Mel’s nerves were at an all-time high. Her stomach roiled, and her chest pinched. Everything inside her wanted to run.
Suddenly, she wasn’t so sure she was doing the right thing.
A million fears rose to the surface of her thoughts. What if he was a jerk? What if he hated the kids? What if he was rude to them? Or overly charming, which for some reason, seemed twice as bad. Everything her mind conjured turned her stomach, and she desperately wished for Blake’s presence at her side—to calm her, to help her get through this, to make the kids laugh, and turn her insides to mush.
Mel spotted the kids right where she left them. Sitting at a small round table with Caroline, eating from a plate of assorted cookies. Each of them sporting fruit
punch mustaches, and when she glanced over at Craig, she knew he saw them, too.
He paused, his steps frozen as he smiled and took them in, one by one, with bright eyes. Then he started walking again, and they reached the table far too soon.
