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Mace quirked his lips and looked around. “Uh, you know. You’ve just been on my mind, and I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
I raised my eyebrows. “That seems suspicious,” I laughed. There had to be more to it than just that. “What made you think of me?”
“I think about you a lot, Imogen. You were a big part of my life when we were growing up.”
“But what after fifteen years made you want to find me? Or make your two girlfriends want to find me?”
“Girlfriends?” Mace laughed. “Babe, I haven’t ever had a girlfriend.”
I rolled my eyes. “Right,” I drawled. “You haven’t had a girlfriend and are still a–.” Lord. I was about to call him a virgin. “Man.” I cringed and dropped my chin to my chest. It would have been better to call him a virgin.
“You are exactly the girl I remember, Imogen. Shy, but couldn’t keep a thought inside your head.”
“What?” I protested. “I can keep thoughts in my head; I just have a problem filtering out the ones that should stay put.”
“Exactly.”
I sat up and leaned toward Mace. “Well, you’re the same, too. You have something you need to tell or ask me, and you’re doing everything but that. Spit it out why you’re here, Jonathon.”
“Mace, babe,” he reminded me.
I waved my hand at him. “You’ll always be Jonathon to me.”
“Jonathon has been long gone, Imogen. He wasn’t the type of man that was going to help me survive.”
“Well, Jonathon did more than survive when I knew him. He saved me.” Jonathon and I hadn’t talked much after everything that had happened fifteen years ago. He helped me clean up, I went home, and I was in San Diego the next day.
I tried not to think about that day.
I did what I had to do to live, and Jonathon was there for me the whole time.
Until I left.
“I’m Mace now, babe. I’d appreciate it if you called me that.”
“Fine,” I whispered.
“God,” he sighed. “I didn’t come here wanting to argue about my name.”
“Then why did you come?” I asked again. “We’re circling what you really want to talk about. Just say it.”
Mace closed his eyes and dropped his chin to his chest. “Because what I’ve got to say isn’t something you just blurt out to someone you haven’t seen in fifteen years.”
“So you think we’re going to make small talk for a couple of hours, and then you can spring it on me?”
“No, I thought I’d feel you out and see if you can handle what I have to tell you.”
I cocked my head to the side. “Are you dying or something, Mace?”
He shook his head. “No more so than everyone else. We’re all gonna die one day, but right now, I don’t know when that will be.”
That was a relief, but so many other things could still be wrong.
“Then what is it?”
Mace took his sunglasses off and tossed them on the coffee table. He ran his fingers through his hair, and his eyes connected with mine. “Darrin Bing is trying to pin Kent’s murder on me. I’m looking at life in prison if I can’t prove I didn’t kill Kent.”
Air left my lungs, and my worst nightmare came to life. “They can’t do that.”
