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I jerked my head in Adrian’s direction. “Hecalled us.”
Her gaze slid over to our tattooed friend. I saw a flash of something: panic, maybe. Whatever it was, it disappeared quickly.
“So Adrian tells us he’s coming to town, which we expected. But he needs to come clean about something. Something that happened while Luke and I were gone. Something we never knew about.”
Kayla looked down, a little dejectedly. “Crap.”
Luke laughed. “Yeah, right?”
“It was… well, we were lonely,” she started in. “Everyone else was gone. Elizabeth, too. We were the only ones left in North Glade, and then my parents died, and I needed…”
“Stop.” I raised my hand, gently. “Listen, Luke and I discussed it at length. Wegetit. It’s cool.”
“Totally cool,” Luke added, turning to face her. “It wasn’t exactly something we expected,” he shrugged, “but again, it was something we understood.”
I looked at Kayla, who still hadn’t looked up. When she did, she swung her gaze Adrian’s way.
“Why tell them?”
“Because believe it or not, I felt the same way,” he said. “I’ve been lost for a while, Kayla. Bouncing around from place to place, job to job. I… I never had what I had with you. Not with any other woman, and there were quite a few.”
“Quit bragging,” Luke rolled his eyes.
Adrian shot him a look of mild annoyance before continuing. “That time we spent, just the two of us? I realize now that it should’ve been more. I should’vetakenyou, Kayla. I should’ve made you my girlfriend.” He took a slow breath and shook his head. “I screwed up, just liketheseguys screwed up. So when the tragedy with Elizabeth happened, and I heard you were coming back to North Glade? I figured I needed to try.”
She looked utterly shocked now, not angry. Not guilty. Not anything else.
“So… you’re trying to get meback?” she asked incredulously. “Is that it?”
“Something like that,” I told her. “Maybe. Hell, we don’t even know,” I said in exasperation.
Luke nodded, jumping in again. “What wedoknow is that we didn’t want to fight over you again. Or overwhelm you. Or make you feel cornered, or out of place.”
“But it was either this or we rush you,” I explained. “Compete for you. Maybe even drive you away again, at a time when the four of us should really be coming together, like old times.”
“At least for Elizabeth,” Adrian nodded. “But yes.”
The song changed. The silence stretched awkwardly, broken only by the clinking of ice in our glasses.
“So the three of you talked,” Kayla reiterated. “Together. About me.”
“Yes.”
“And what exactly did you decide?”
I looked at the others awkwardly, wondering how to word things. Adrian was stoic, impassive. This time it was Luke who gave me the nod.
“Well,” I said, setting my glass down on the coffee table between us. “That’s when we made what you’d call a gentleman’s agreement…”
Twenty-One
KAYLA
I sat in stunned silence as they told me everything, every last detail. They told me how they’d loved me, each of them in their own way. How they considered me a missed opportunity. The proverbial one that got away.
Then they told me how they’d each stepped aside to let the others have time with me when I returned. I learned how Luke hung back so Warren could greet me at the hotel. How Luke’s carefully-planned morning involved the others stepping back as well.
And then my time with Adrian…
