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“You okay?” he asked.
“Yes. I’m fine.”
I’m fine. You’ll be fine. But why do I feel like you and I are anything but fine?
“If you can’t find the friends’ numbers, maybe her teacher could put you in touch with them,” she said. “Even though the kids are on vacation, sometimes the teachers have workdays. Call tomorrow and check. Because you’re right—kids usually go to camp together, don’t they?”
She was rattling on. She sounded like an idiot.
“Let’s see,” he said. “The last time I sent my kids to camp—Oh, wait. I don’t have kids.”
He laughed. She did, too, but it sounded more like a nervous hiccup.
“Are you sure about that?” she asked.
“Yeah. I’m sure.”
“Good to know.”
She bit her bottom lip to keep herself from saying anything else stupid.
He reached out and lifted her chin so that she was looking him in the eyes.
The feel of his touch, the unwavering directness off his gaze heated her body.
“If you don’t want to talk about the wedding, we don’t have to,” he said, returning to the conversation they’d skirted with all the camp talk. “I won’t lie to you, Elle. It’s not pleasant. I mean, I wouldn’t have intentionally messed with Roger’s head if he’d been the fine, upstanding guy everyone thought he was. It didn’t matter what everyone thought. You were the only one who mattered and I knew he didn’t deserve you.”
The way he was looking at her, with his eyes fiery and impassioned, in contrast with the gentle way he was touching her face—like he was holding something fragile—she thought he might lean in and kiss her. And the stupidest thing was that she would’ve let him.
She wanted him to.
But then he pulled away his hand and took a step back, putting some much needed space between them.
“The only thing I need for you to know is that I would never hurt you, Elle. Not on purpose. Not then. Not now. Not ever.”
She blinked. Her lips parted slightly.
“Roger was cheating on me, wasn’t he?”
Daniel didn’t answer right away. He didn’t have to. The look on his face said it all.
Until the wedding day, Daniel had been Roger’s best friend. They’d kept in touch through Roger’s college years at the University of Georgia. Even though Daniel didn’t go to college, he’d spent more time in Athens, Georgia, than Elle had.
She hadn’t been happy when Roger had asked Daniel to be his best man in their wedding. To her, Daniel had always been that friend, the one whose mission seemed intent on leading Roger astray. As if Roger, the man-child, was so naive and impressionable he could be led. For the first time it dawned on her that Roger was probably the one who had been doing the leading. He certainly had led her on a merry chase. For all these years it had been easier to blame Daniel than to accept the fact that Roger had been playing her for a fool long before the day he’d left her standing at the altar.
“I owe you an apology, Daniel.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do. You saved me from making the worst mistake of my life, but until now I blamed you for ruining everything. If it hadn’t ended there, it would’ve ended eventually. It would’ve been messy, and even though Roger running out on me was pretty damn humiliating, it would’ve been more humiliating to be the wife who was the last to know about her husband’s infidelities.”
Pain knitted Daniel’s brows. “I’m sorry it had to happen that way.”
“Be honest with me. What happened the night before the wedding that made you so adamant about stopping the wedding? Did Roger cheat on me that night?”
“Elle.” His voice was a warning.
“Daniel.” Her voice was insistent.
“Did you not talk to Roger after he left?”
Elle shook her head. “I saw him once after the wedding. He apologized and said he realized too late that he didn’t love me enough to spend the rest of his life with me.” She shrugged. “But now I’m wondering if something else happened.”
“After all this time do the details really matter?” he asked.
