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“I was hoping that in all of the confusion and excitement, you wouldn’t notice until you’d had a good night’s sleep.” He reached out and brushed his thumb over the tear track on my cheek. “She’s not over your fight. But that doesn’t mean she’ll never be over it. Good friends can have incredibly painful separations and still heal.”
“Says the man who’s still besties with his ex.”
He chuckled. “This may come as a shock to you, but Valerie and I haven’t always been civil to each other. We worked very hard at being friends, for Emma’s sake, but after we separated, it was understandably difficult. It took time to become genuinely close, to really consider each other friends again. If Holli did come into your life again, do you think you would be fully recovered from the hurtful things she said?”
“No, I don’t suppose I would.” I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. “Why didn’t things work out with Valerie?”
“Ah, the patented Sophie Scaife deflection technique,” he said with a wistful smile. “Fine. Because you’re tired, and because I’m impressed that you haven’t asked before now, I’ll allow it.”
He stretched his long legs out and got comfortable before continuing. “I cheated on her.”
Of all the things I was expecting to hear—that they had simply grown apart, that they weren’t compatible, that they were just too young—that one possibility hadn’t entered my mind. I had never in my life considered Neil capable of something so reprehensible.
“What… Why?”
“There isn’t a good reason.” The fact that he sounded actually remorseful helped keep visions of future heartache from prancing through my head. “Our relationship was never perfect. I’d slept with her brother, after all. When we started dating, I never intended it to be anything permanent. When we decided to keep Emma
, I thought she would be enough to make me stay. I thought I would grow to love Valerie, to really love her, and I did. But not in a way that either of us wanted.
“There was a woman at my father’s office who was very attractive, and when I was in Reykjavik on business, I…slept with her. I pursued, I initiated, and it was the most selfish and immature thing I’ve ever done.” He watched me, wary. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before, but I’m still terribly ashamed of my conduct, and I can’t bear to have you think badly of me. Which is possibly the third most selfish and immature thing about me.”
“What was the second?” As if cheating weren’t bad enough. I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.
“Telling Valerie.” He looked out the window, a muscle ticking near his jaw. “Or not telling her soon enough. I felt so guilty about stepping out, but I didn’t tell Valerie until a few weeks before she had Emma. By that time, three whole months had gone, and my guilt had eaten away at me. So, I told her, and I shouldn’t have.”
“Ever?” That didn’t seem right, just not telling someone that you cheated on them. “What were you going to do instead? Stay with her and keep it from her?”
“I should have let her go, and never told her. The end result would have been the same; we would have separated. But it would have spared her some pain.” He turned back to me, his brow furrowed, his green eyes intense. “I should have been honest with her from the moment I knew that our relationship wouldn’t work out.”
This was pretty heavy, after the night I’d had. “I think I would have been happier if we’d kept talking about Holli.”
“At any rate, I’m glad you know now. I wanted to tell you before we set a date for the wedding. To give you time to…consider.”
I almost got whiplash, I was so physically taken aback. “Are you kidding me?”
“Well, I’ve heard it said that once a man cheats, he’s predisposed to cheat a second time. I don’t ever want to hurt you like that, and I cannot imagine a circumstance under which I would. But you deserved to know.”
“Because your guilt was eating you up?” I paused. “You think I should have kept my involvement with Deja’s firing a secret.”
He considered his words carefully. “I think you had to. The difference between you and I is that when I told Valerie about my transgression, I didn’t beg her for a second chance. I told her, and I ended it. You didn’t tell Holli the truth because you wanted to destroy your friendship. You wanted to tell her in an effort to save it. And I think that is one of the many ways in which you are a much better person than I am.”
I studied his face, the face I was more in love with now than I had ever dreamed possible just a year ago. All of the good about him, and all the bad, I loved him, because he loved all of me, as well. That was what love was.
Since I loved Holli, and I knew she loved me, I couldn’t believe we’d never be able to reconcile our own bad and good parts.
I refused to believe our friendship was over.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“What time was the reservation?”
“Eight,” I called to Neil from the bathroom. I grinned at myself in the mirror as I rolled a tube of dark berry lipstick over my bottom lip. Somehow, miraculously, Emma and I had managed to keep her father’s surprise party a total secret. Tonight, he was expecting a quiet dinner with me and Rudy, followed by a proper fiftieth birthday celebration after we moved into the new house in two weeks.
“A combination retirement and birthday party,” he’d described it. “I didn’t think I would make it to fifty, so I want to do it right.”
He had absolutely no idea how “right” tonight was going to be.
I checked myself in the mirror and straightened the skirt of my very snug silver sequined sheath dress. I checked the double-sided tape hiding my bra-straps beneath the thin shoulders of the dress, which were barely wider, and pushed up my cleavage. If we were just going out to dinner, I might have worn something a bit more conservative, but tonight was a party, and I was damn well going to dress like it.
