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He hadn’t seemed embarrassed then. He’d acted like he was mad because she’d been upset.
“It was my fault, too.”
He shoved his hands into the pockets of his shorts. “It didn’t feel like it was somebody’s fault at the time.”
“I shouldn’t have let it go there.” She pressed her lips together firmly. “You never told Matt,” she ventured after a moment.
“Of course not.” He looked indignant now.
“I did,” she said after a moment.
Lukas’s face went even redder. “You told him?” He looked aghast.
“Not...not everything,” Holly muttered, her own face hot now. “I thought you still might, and I didn’t want him to learn it from you.”
Lukas was still sputtering. “You told him we...” But he didn’t finish.
“I said...you’d kissed me.” That was enough. She raised her chin defiantly and glared at him.
Lukas dragged in a breath, then pulled his hands out of his pockets and dragged one down his face. He swallowed. “That’s all you told him?” He sounded somewhere between wary and relieved.
“I didn’t give him a play-by-play,” Holly said, annoyed. “I didn’t think he’d want to hear it.”
“No,” Lukas replied with feeling.
“But I didn’t want it hanging over me, either, in case you decided to come back and rat on me.”
“I would never have—”
“You were friends,” she said quietly. “He didn’t deserve that.”
Lukas was wearing sunglasses so she couldn’t read his gaze, but she saw his Adam’s apple move, and he dipped his head, acknowledging her words. His jaw tightened. “No, he didn’t. I had no right.”
“No, you didn’t.” Holly was glad he realized that. “But it happened. So—” Holly shrugged as indifferently as she could “—I thought, ‘I’ll just tell him about the kiss. We’ll laugh about it.’ So I did.”
Lukas’s hand wrapped around the top of the truck’s door frame, his knuckles white. “And did you?” he asked roughly. “Laugh?”
“We did.” She didn’t tell him how hard it had been to make a joke of it. But Matt would never have believed his best friend would have crossed the line. And he had given her way too much benefit of the doubt, as well. One of the things she loved most about Matt—and one of his biggest failings—was his tendency to believe the best of people always.
Lukas didn’t speak for a long moment. His expression was unfathomable. Finally, he drew a breath. “Well,” he said lightly. “No harm done then.”
“No.”
Not unless you counted Holly’s mortification at knowing she had shared with Lukas something she hadn’t yet shared with Matt. Later, thank God, she and Matt had learned to please each other.
But Holly could never forget that Lukas had been her first.
CHAPTER FIVE
SHE WAS LIVING in the same high-rise condo in Brooklyn that she and Matt had been in last time Lukas had been back in the country. He had been there briefly when he’d picked Matt up to go out for a beer.
Holly hadn’t been there, of course. But Matt had shown him around the flat. It was small but modern, stylish and with spectacular views across the East River toward Manhattan. Lukas had wondered at their choice because he’d always imagined them returning to Long Island and raising a family. Maybe they would have if Matt had lived. It hadn’t been the sort of thing you asked.
Now he wondered what Holly’s plans were. In her letter she had said she was “tying up loose ends.” Nothing else. And she wasn’t saying anything now.
She’d offered directions to her condo, but other than that she hadn’t spoken. And once he had tendered his awkward apology—for something he still didn’t quite regret—Lukas had gone silent, as well. He didn’t know what to say to her. He never had. It was why he’d always taken refuge in teasing, in baiting, because she had always touched something inside him he didn’t completely understand.
Worse, she had always seemed to see right through his bravado. He winced inwardly at the thought of her having told Matt even an expurgated version of what had happened that night. And he squirmed more than a little at them laughing about it. But it hadn’t destroyed their relationship at least, and with the hindsight of some hard-won maturity, he had to be glad of that. Matt and Holly had been right for each other, as much as he hadn’t wanted to see it. They had known better.
