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“Anyway,” Tamara continued, seemingly unfazed by my lack of participation, “we need you down here at least tonight, and then again in a couple weeks for the rehearsal and the big day.”

“And you’re sure Amber wants me to be a bridesmaid?” I asked.

It wasn’t that I didn’t know Amber. I knew her quite well, in fact. It was just that she was younger than me, my sister’s best friend. She and I had never really hung out much, and aside from when she was a teenager and I was older, we didn’t really talk about anything important. Even then, it was more about me than her. I never really felt like I knew her that well.

“She does,” Tamara assured me. “She’s really excited you said yes.”

“Well, I mean, you didn’t give me a choice, T.”

Tamara laughed. It was her way of saying that while what I said was true, she was not going to take any responsibility for my discomfort in the situation.

“Look, Logan is running the ceremony, Owen is running the security, and Collin is best man. Jesse couldn’t be left out, so he’s also standing with Luke. But Amber doesn’t have anyone else but me and you, so…”

“By default,” I said. “I see.”

“She does really care about you, you know,” Tamara said. “Just because you left when you became an adult doesn’t mean we stopped caring about you.”

There was a note of sad bitterness in her voice that I hated hearing. I knew she felt, in a way, that I’d abandoned her. But I’d had to get out of Foley, and I couldn’t tell her exactly why. Not without crushing her.

“I know,” I said.

“So,” Tamara said, changing her tone as she shifted into a subject she was far more interested in, “is Graham coming?”

I sighed.

I had told her very little about Graham, and her curiosity was overwhelming. I didn’t blame her, since I rarely ever dated and hadn’t mentioned anyone as a serious candidate to her in years. And while I was secretly excited about the prospect of being in a wedding where Jesse would absolutely be there, the fact was that I was technically seeing someone.

Technically.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think so. We don’t… we don’t really do a whole lot together.”

“Isn’t he your boyfriend, though?”

“Yeah, I guess,” I said. “Look, it’s a lot different when you get older. You don’t just spend every second together because youalready have a life. Besides, we’re both so busy. I’m busy running the southwest region of the company, and he’s the COO, and…”

“So he’s just a guy you’ve been dating,” Tamara said.

“Not… exactly,” I said.

The thing was, I knew Graham was a lot more serious about me than I was him. But while we’d gone out a dozen or so times and always had a great time, I’d shied away from being physical with him. I told him I was more into commitment before that, which was true—it just perhaps wasn’t as true as I was letting on. I did value commitment before physical stuff. It’s just that with one very specific person, that commitment was arbitrary, and so were my hardline rules about being physical. And that person wasnotGraham.

Still, I was getting older. The window for kids was likely closing, if that was something I wanted at all. I was the same age as Luke Galloway, and everyone said he was getting married late as it was. I was practically ancient. Jesse was three years younger than me, and while that meant he was the same age as my sister and Amber, a little younger actually, it meant that he had more time. More options. Especially with his whole… thing. The look, the talent, all that. He could, and often did, get any girl he wanted. I needed to just add his name to my naughty list of memories and move on.

So why couldn’t I?

Graham, on paper, was perfect. Good-looking, successful, kind, wealthy, the only thing he wasn’t waswarm. His family had come from money, and had always come from money, and while Graham was a nice man, he seemed to have a block between his emotions and the rest of the world. If he wasn’t smiling or laughing about something, he was blank. It made it harder to connect with him, and while I knew he was developingas much emotion for me as he was capable of expressing, I needed more than that.

I needed passion. I needed danger. I needed drama.

I needed Jesse.

And I couldn’t have him.

I’d gotten my one night with him, and I’d chosen to leave the bed and do the interview. I chose my career over finding out where that one magic night could have led. That was on me. He didn’t stick around to see me. In fact, he might have thought I was in a relationship already, with Graham’s brother, the CEO.

It was a lost cause. I needed to get over it. I was sure he had.

“You never told me how you met him,” Tamara said, snapping me out of my thoughts and back to reality. “I mean, I know you work for the same company, but how did you meet him?”