AllFreeNovel
Share Us
His lips quirked. “Perfect.”
It was an odd mix of weird and familiarity hanging out with Eric. They were friends, but it’d never been just the two of them. And definitely not in her apartment. The only men who’d ever been in her apartment were her dad and James.
Usually she’d glance over and see James’s tall runner’s body. Eric was so different. A little shorter, but more muscular. Fair-colored hair, while James’s was darker.
While James bordered on uptight and angsty, Eric was more laid back in his demeanor, and even in his nice work clothes.
“Feel like a throwback and watching Love Actually?”
Surprise had her blinking over to the living room at him.
“You’d watch that with me? Like, willingly?”
James had not been a fan of anything romance driven. He was a comic book junkie through and through and his movies ran to the same taste.
“Yeah. I love Alan Rickman. He’s got a thing for Christmas movies between this and Die Hard.”
“One, I’m glad we agree Die Hard is a Christmas movie. And two, Alan’s kind of a jerk in this movie though.”
“Oh, undoubtedly, he’s an epic douchebag in this movie. But he was a brilliant actor.”
“He was.” He’d played the villain and the cheating husband very well.
Eric hit play on the remote and set it down. “I don’t know if I ever said it, but I’m sorry about you and James.”
With the rice cooking and the pork heating, she turned and made her way to the couch. For reasons that she completely couldn’t explain, she asked, “Are you really?”
*
The affirmative replylocked in Eric’s throat. He should’ve said yes. That he was deeply sorry James and Hannah had broken up, but the words refused to come out.
At least, those particular ones. He rephrased the response in his head, and then the words came. “I’m sorry about what he did to you.”
Because he couldn’t be sorry that Hannah was single. Maybe he couldn’t act on the fact that she was available, but he could certainly celebrate the fact that his friend was no longer dating her.
Which makes you the biggest jerk on the planet.
He pushed aside the nagging voice and offered her a small smile. “You didn’t deserve that.”
She came to sit beside him on the couch, leaning back against the armrest and tucking her legs beneath her bottom as she faced him. The tempting scent of her floral perfume—something that had teased his nostrils in the car—reached him again.
“Some people think I overreacted.” Her gaze searched his. “They say I shouldn’t have thrown away such a long-term relationship because he kissed another woman.”
“Nobody has the right to tell you how you should feel.”
But he knew, even if she wasn’t admitting it, that there had to be more to it than that. Hannah didn’t strike him as impulsive or emotional. If she’d ended the relationship over that kiss, Eric suspected she’d been thinking about it before then. That incident had just been the catalyst that pushed her to do it.
She bit her lip. “Sometimes I wonder what on earth I’m doing. We were together since middle school.”
He nodded, not saying anything, because he got the feeling she was just trying to bounce her thoughts off someone.
“We never got engaged.” She shook her head. “Never even lived together.”
“I wondered about that.”
“It would’ve broken my dad’s heart.” Her smile turned wry. “If we’d lived together before marriage.”
“And the never getting engaged?” He couldn’t help but ask the question he swore he wouldn’t. “Did he just never ask?”
