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“You did?” I ask.
“No. It’s a quiche, the kind you buy premade at the store. Fooled you though.”
I look over at the dining table. It’s set for two with plates, napkins, and silverware. It’s sweet. Like a mini date in the morning. I twist my fingers around each other at the thought.
He clears his throat and runs his hand in circles over his chest. “Yeah. I thought we’d have time to sit and talk for a while, but you have to get to that thing. It could take a while to get there with traffic, so we should leave now.”
Placing a piece of quiche in a napkin, he walks around the kitchen half-wall, hands it to me, and grabs his keys. A mug, freshly filled with coffee, is on the counter. The French vanilla creamer beside it. It’s left forgotten as I follow Luke outside to his car.
Someone really wants me out of his house and fast.
Luke slides into the driver’s side, and we head to the hotel in silence. It’s an odd kind of silence. A forced staleness in the air that I should be happy about, yet it has my mind confused as to where the shift in energy came from. His hands are both on the wheel, and his gaze is fixed forward, jaw stiff and those cheekbones perturbing. He looks mad and yet … kind of sad at the same time.
The quiche is hot in my hands and looks perfectly golden. I fiddle with the crust and roll the dough, crumbling it between my fingers until it’s almost nonexistent. Like the piece of quiche never was.
To my surprise, we’re at the hotel in moments. At the house, he made it seem like we’d be in the car for twenty minutes, not two. I suppose he just wanted me out of his house and out of his life.
I remember that feeling.
I open the door and lay a foot on the pavement, about to hoist myself out when he calls me back.
“Wait.”
My heart pauses in my throat as I settle back in the seat. Turning, I am caught in the intense stare of a man who wooed me with cheesy pickup lines and a screw-top bottle of wine.
After a short silence, he asks, his voice low and gruff, “How are you?”
“I’m fine. Yesterday was a lot but—”
“I’m not talking about yesterday. I mean … with what happened … between us.”
Of all the impromptu times to be reminiscing about the past, now—when I’m about to go into a hotel to work while wearing another woman’s dress and drugstore panties, holding a crumbling quiche in my hands—is not the moment.
Still, there is never—and will never be—a good time for us to talk.
For me to talk.
Some would say I owe the explanation in this situation. While I have many things I want to tell him, I’m not sure it would do any good. In fact, a whole lot of awful could come from me confessing my feelings to him.
Instead of answering his question, I ask him my own. “Do you regret anything that transpired between us?” I watch as his eyes dart downward.
He swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing as the lines on his forehead form into deep, pensive canyons.
I keep my attention on him and ask it in another way. “Is there any morsel of doubt—a single, tiniest bit of regret—you have about the choices we made?”
My question simmers with him for a moment longer than I expected. When he looks up at me, it’s with eyes bearing so much conviction that I know he’s about to tell me the absolute truth.
“No.”
A slow, quivering breath escapes my throat, and I blink away, trying to get my bearings. His answer is a devastating knife to my chest, and yet it’s confirmation that I made the right decision all those years ago.
“Same,” I lie. “Thank you for helping last night.”
I get out of the car and head into the hotel. When I turn around, Luke’s car is gone just as fast as he left the last time I saw him.
four
“EXCUSE ME, MS. HATHAWAY, there is a package for you, waiting in the lobby.” The hotel manager comes up to me at the end of the brunch event.
