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“Your theory of kissing me?”
His eyes shifted sideways. He looked a tad guilty, if she wasn’t mistaken. “Yes.”
She smiled, her face flush with warmth. “Resorting to trickery, I see. Well, it must have worked.”
A flash of the kiss came back to her, stronger and with more certainty, perhaps because she was starting to believe it had been real.
“What other tricks did you pull?”
He stroked his chin. “Well, your favorite drink might have played a role. But the whole day was kind of a trick in a sense.”
“In what sense?”
He sped around an old pickup truck piled with landscaping equipment. “As part of my theory, I purposely didn’t run into you in the coffee shop yesterday morning. I didn’t interact with you at all until Lila’s birthday party. I wanted to see if altering the way we met would change anything, and it seems to have worked.”
She stared out the windshield, blinking. The idea of him manipulating their interactions suddenly made her feel like a puppet and he was pulling the strings. How many times had he tried to get her to remember him? And in what other ways?
She shifted uncomfortably.
“Have I upset you?” he asked with sincere concern.
“No. It’s only that all this is making me feel like I don’t have any free will. Like all of it, us, is predetermined.”
He shot a coy grin at her. “Oh, you have plenty of free will. Don’t worry about that. That’s why you never stay, despite my best efforts. Every date we’ve been on has resulted in you not remembering me the next day.”
Gemma stilled in surprise. “We’ve been out on dates?”
A slightly guilty grimace came over his face, and he nodded. “Yes. I didn’t say anything about it before because I know this is all a lot to take in. I know you feel like you’ve only met me today, so I didn’t want to overwhelm you. But we’ve gone out a few times before.”
Gemma silently blinked at him, too stunned to speak. She wondered if he’d waited until she was a captive audience to drop that little bomb. She swept her mind for a memory, an inkling of going on a date with this strange, beautiful man, and came up with nothing. She managed to summonwords while her head was still in a whirl. “Why don’t... Why can’t I remember any of them?”
“That is an excellent question and one that I don’t think I can answer. Not in detail at least. Though I can say that I’ve enjoyed them despite the less-than-favorable endings.”
Thoughts of Jack trying to woo her into remembering him made her smile, despite her previous thoughts. She wondered if she hadn’t met him in the most bizarre of circumstances, perhaps on a day he wasn’t claiming was repeating ad nauseam, if she would have given him a chance. Though, according to him, she’d given him several chances. But she had still left after.
A piece of her still-healing heart throbbed in pain as if to remind her of her reasons for being single.
“It’s not you. It’s...” She trailed off, feeling vulnerable and reluctant to open herself up. “My last relationship didn’t end well.”
He fully turned his head to look at her. Something knowing and hinting at protective flashed in his eyes. “I know. I’ve blacklisted Azalea from all my devices and audio platforms I subscribe to. I also gave their newest album one star and implored everyone not to buy it in my review.”
A small, surprised laugh popped from her mouth. “I’ve told you about Nick and his band?”
He nodded. “Reluctantly, but yes. Their song came on at the restaurant during one of our lunch dates, and your mood tanked so fast, I thought you had rapid-onset food poisoning or something.”
Gemma cringed in embarrassment, though she had no memory of it. “Sorry if that was awkward.”
“It wasn’t, and it’s fine. I’m happy to learn anything about you, especially if it has anything to do with why you’re hesitant to get to know me.” He shot her a soft, tender smile that felt like it unlocked a closed-off chamber of her heart.
“What did I tell you about him?”
He pursed his lips like he didn’t particularly enjoy the memory. “You said you dated for a year and that he was a, and I quote, ‘self-absorbed asshole whose insufferable voice I never want to hear again whether it be on the radio or in person.’ ”
Though she didn’t remember it, Gemma could not deny that those words had likely come out of her mouth. She nodded. “Sounds like something I’d say.”
“Oh, you definitely said it,” Jack said like they were in on a secret. He glanced sideways. “I didn’t want to completely derail our lunch that day, so I didn’t push, but I sense there’s more to the story.”
She caught the hopeful, probing, yet still polite look on his face.
