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“Alden.” She laughs at my bewildered expression. “I told Alden I love him.”

“Oh,” is my witty response. He mentioned that last night, and I don’t like hearing it anymore now than I did then, which makes zero bloody sense to me. What do I care if she loves him?

She rights her body and does an odd little twirl in my kitchen before she skips over to the dining room and drops herself in a chair with her arms on the table. “Yep. So you see, you’re not the only clingy bitch here.”

I chuckle, but there’s little humor in it. She’s not clingy for telling him she loves him. She’s brave for it. I admire her for putting herself out there like that, knowing it’s something I’ll never be able to do, let alone feel for someone.

“We dated years ago,” she continues. “It was back in college for a little less than a year before it fizzled out when we went todifferent medical schools and decided it was impractical to try to stay together. I hadn’t seen him in years until we ran into each other at a bar in the early fall, and things picked back up for us. Hell, he asked us to be exclusive after our first weekend together.”

“That’s rather fast.”

She shrugs. “It didn’t feel that way, though. It felt like the perfect rekindling of something we hadn’t wanted to let go of. Things were great between us. Then one night I got drunk at a friend’s party. We were dancing, and I told him I loved him.” She shakes her head ruefully. “I said,I love you so much.”

“I see,” I remark absently, realizing she’s telling me hers so I’ll feel comfortable telling her mine. It’s amazing how well she was able to read that I needed that from her. “Did he say it back?”

“No.” She snorts a sardonic laugh. “He kissed my cheek, and we kept dancing. That was it. And that night I didn’t stay over at his place as we planned.”

My jaw inadvertently locks, but I do my best to relax it. Fucking prat. “That’s rough.”

“It was. I was pretty hurt by it. We’d only been dating a couple of months, but I was serious about us, and I thought he was too. He acted like he was.”

Now it’s my fist locking up. “But he wasn’t?”

She holds her good hand out to the side as if to sayobviously not, since I’m here telling you about it. “The next morning, I panicked that I had said it, and he didn’t. But he never mentioned it, and things seemed, well, normal after that for us, I guess.”

“What changed?”

She peers up at me, all big, green eyes fanned with thick, dark lashes, and adorable freckles across her cheeks and nose. “Hebecame a bit distant with me and it was noticeable. To the point where I called him out on it.”

Strong girl. Not many would do that, I suspect.

She stops there, her pointer finger on her good hand drawing patterns along the woodgrain of the table. “Then what?” I prompt.

A stricken look crosses her face, her body going stiff, and her eyes glassing over. “A week later he came over and told me that things were moving too fast between us. That he cared about me a lot but wasn’t ready for something so serious between us and didn’t want to hurt me.”

“What does that even mean?” comes out before I can stop it.

“He simply didn’t love me back and wasn’t ready for me to say that to him. He thought that if we stayed together with my feelings as they are and his where they are, then I’d end up getting more hurt in the long run.”

Shit. Poor girl.

“He’s not a bad guy,” she continues, defending him in a way that chafes my skin. “It was difficult to be mad at him. He was kind and straightforward and honest about how he felt. He just didn’t love me back, and I don’t think he ever had. Not even when we were together the first time.”

“He said that?” My eyebrows hit my hairline, shocked by that. How could anyone not love her back if she gave them her heart?

“No. But it was obvious he hadn’t. He said he wanted us to continue to see each other casually if I felt I could handle that, and I told him I wasn’t interested in dating that way, and that was that. Clearly, I’m hurt. Perhaps a bit heartbroken too.”

I abandon the nappies on the counter and join her at the table. I shouldn’t do it, I know I fucking shouldn’t after how it felt to hold her last night, but I take her hand in mine anyway. It’s warm and soft and small, just like her.

“Which you have every right to be.” I offer her a wan smile. “Is he older than you? He looked older.”

“Thirty-five, and his commitment issues at that age should be a huge red flag for me.”

I try not to wince at that. I am the master of commitment issues. He’s six years older than I am. Four years older than her. I wonder if she prefers older and not younger men.

I brush that off. “He showed up last night. Why?”

A smirk flirts with her lips. “I have no clue. Some stranger I met on the street stepped in and said he was my boyfriend.”