Page 43 of Now That It’s You (The Can’t Have Hearts Club #5)

T wo days later, Kyle stood barefoot in his dining room polishing a piece of copper. He’d been rubbing the same hunk of metal for an hour, sliding the cloth over the grainy surface until his hand had gone numb.

He should be working in his studio instead of his house. He’d already made a mess of steel shavings in his kitchen sink, the shiny flecks reminding him of the glitter in Meg’s eyes.

But the studio held more memories of Meg. Of her touching his sculptures, confessing her secrets, making love with him on the cot . . .

The doorbell rang, and Kyle looked up from the warm wedge of copper. He set it on the table as his pulse began to gallop. Maybe it was her. Maybe she was ready to talk. Maybe he’d managed to conjure Meg with the force of his own memory.

As he started toward the door, he found himself chanting it in a silent mantra. Please be Meg, please be Meg, please be ?—

“Cara.” His voice sounded flat as he held the door open and stared at the woman he’d once laughed with, cared about, lived with.

“Don’t sound so excited,” she deadpanned, offering him a wide smile to show she wasn’t really offended.

“Sorry, I just wasn’t expecting you.” He ran a hand over his chin and realized he hadn’t shaved for days. When was the last time he’d showered?

“I brought you something,” Cara said, holding out a cardboard box.

Kyle looked down at it, staring into the clutter of his past life. Cara’s arms bowed a little under the weight of it, so he reached out to take it from her.

“What is all this?” he asked.

“The stuff I told you about the other day. Just a bunch of knickknacks you left behind at the house.”

Kyle stared down at the contents of the box. He spotted a charger for a phone he’d lost years ago and a sweat-stained baseball cap he used to wear on camping trips. There was half a roll of wintergreen lifesavers she couldn’t possibly have assumed he still wanted, but he thanked her anyway.

“I appreciate it,” he managed. He looked back up at her. “Did you want to come in for a second?”

He hoped she’d say no, but she smiled like he’d offered her a box of kittens. “That would be great.” She stepped around him, breezing into his home like she’d been here a dozen times before.

In truth, it had only been once, just a few weeks after their breakup. She’d stopped by to reclaim the muffin pan he’d forgotten was hers to start with, and they’d laughed about it and agreed to remain friends when all was said and done.

From her bed in front of the fireplace, Bindi raised her head. She looked at Cara for a few beats, then laid her head back down on her paws and closed her eyes.

Cara headed for the kitchen bar and pivoted to face him.

She smiled again, and he noticed she wore a low-cut black dress he used to love on her.

Her dark hair was held back with a blue and green silk scarf that matched her eyes.

She looked fresh and polished and beautiful and not a single thing inside him stirred.

“I like the scarf,” he said, for lack of anything better to say.

“Thank you. You gave it to me for my last birthday.”

“I know.”

“I thought I was getting an engagement ring.”

“I know,” he said again. “I’m sorry.”

She shrugged and leaned back against the granite counter. “It seems silly now,” she said. “Water under the bridge.”

“Right.” Kyle set the box on his dining room table. “Want something to drink? Wine or beer or water or something?”

“Beer would be great!” she sounded entirely too upbeat for a woman who used to hate beer, but Kyle rummaged in the fridge and found an amber ale he thought she might like.

He poured it into a glass, trying to be a good host but mostly feeling like a curmudgeonly asshole who just wanted to be left alone.

He handed her the beer and eased himself onto a barstool beside her.

“You’re not having one?” she asked, seeming to hesitate as she raised the glass to her lips.

“I’m good,” he said. “Gotta work.”

“Work,” she said, taking a small sip of the beer as her eyes scanned his dining room. “How’s that going?”

“Good. Sold a piece to a gallery in Wisconsin.”

Cara smiled and reached out to trail a finger up his arm. “Not my piece, I hope? The calla lily?”

Kyle shook his head. “No. Not that one.”

“Good. I want you to have something that makes you think of me.”

“Why?”

The bluntness of his question seemed to startle them both, and Cara took a moment to answer. “Because,” she said slowly. “Look, I’ll just lay my cards out on the table here. I think we should give it another shot between us.”

Kyle stared blankly at her face. “What?”

“I’ve been thinking about you since I saw you out with your mom the other day, and I miss the way we were. Don’t you?”

The word no teetered on the tip of his tongue, but that would be unnecessarily cruel. He didn’t want to hurt her. He just didn’t want to be with her. Especially not now, with his desire for Meg burning a hot hole through the center of his chest.

“You deserve better,” he said at last.

“I think I deserve you.” She gave him a small smile and set the beer down on the counter. “I think we belong together.”

“No.” Now that he’d said the word, there was no taking it back. Her smile vanished, but Kyle pressed on, knowing he needed to make himself clear. “I’m sorry, Cara, it’s not you. It’s me.”

God, that sounded lame. Cara must have thought so, too, because her brow creased with those tiny little lines she used to call her devil horns.

“No, it isn’t.”

“What?”

“It’s not you. It’s also not me.” She set her beer down on the counter and folded her hands in her lap. “It’s the same thing it always was, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, even though he had a pretty good idea.

Cara aimed her index finger toward the corner of the room. Kyle didn’t have to look to know what she was pointing at. “It’s her, isn’t it? It’s always been her?”

He turned anyway, even though he knew what she was looking at. He stared at the sculpture, at the delicate curves of copper, the burnished brown iron, the sloped steel angle that looked like a shoulder blade. The piece was clearly feminine, but it was abstract, not recognizable as any one person.

At least that’s what Kyle used to think.

“I always knew it was her,” Cara said softly, dropping her hand back in her lap. “All that time together, you loved someone else.”

Kyle swallowed hard and closed his eyes. It seemed stupid to argue, but some stubborn, idiotic part of him did it anyway. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Of course you do.”

He opened his eyes to see her shaking her head a little sadly. He’d expected to see anger in her eyes, but it looked more like pity.

“Meg Delaney,” she said. “Your brother’s wife.”

“They didn’t get married.”

“I know. I was there, remember?” He watched her head tilt as though angling to conjure the memory.

Kyle remembered, too. The lavender scent of the unity candle behind him.

The high giggles of the twin flower girls.

The heated itch under his collar, the sensation of choking to death on his bowtie or his guilt or some combination of the two.

Beside him now, Cara spun the beer glass on the counter. “I watched your face that day,” she said slowly. “When she turned and ran out of that church?”

“I don’t?—”

“I’ve never in my life seen you look at me that way.” She gave a hollow little laugh. “I’ve never seen any man look at any woman that way. Like you wanted to chase her down that aisle.”

He shook his head, wanting to argue, but knowing he didn’t have a leg to stand on. She was right. All of it, every word she’d said.

“I’m sorry, Cara,” he said at last. “I wish it could have been different.”

“It’s okay.” She gave a small shrug and picked up her beer, taking a tiny sip before setting the glass down again. “I knew before I came here today how things would turn out. I had to shoot my shot.”

“I appreciate that,” he said. “It takes guts. More guts than I ever had.”

Cara studied his face. “Does she know?”

Kyle looked at her. He thought about continuing to pretend ignorance, but what was the point?

“She knows,” he said at last. “For all the good it does.”

“Really?” Cara frowned. “She’s not still hung up on Matt, is she?”

“Not like that, no.” He cleared his throat. “It’s—complicated.”

“The best things usually are.”

She studied him for a moment, and Kyle felt the same prickle of alarm he always used to feel when Cara looked at him for too long. Like she could see straight into his brain, into his heart, into his soul.

None of those things had ever belonged to her. Not really.

As the silence stretched out, Cara nodded toward the sculpture again. “You know I don’t say this lightly when I tell you that’s the most beautiful piece you’ve ever created.”

“Thank you.”

“My vajayjay and I can concede defeat.” She reached out and touched his arm. “If she stirs that kind of passion in you, Kyle, you owe it to both of you not to give up so easily.”

“I’m not the one giving up.”

She shook her head, then dropped her hand from his arm and gave him a swat on the butt. “Then get off your ass and prove it.”

Meg sat in her attorney’s office with a glass of tepid iced tea beside her and a pen clutched in her hand.

“Are you sure about this, Meg?” Franklin looked at her with a concerned expression. At least, that’s what she registered with her peripheral vision.

Meg’s focus was on the pen. She turned it over in her hand, looking at the sturdy, curved shaft and the elegant gold tip. “Do you know where I got this?”

There was no response from her attorney, so she glanced up to see him staring at her like she’d just stuffed bananas in her ears.

“The pen?” he asked. “No. I’m afraid I don’t. Is it significant?”

Meg turned the pen over in her hands, marveling at the weight of it, at the exquisite beauty of something so basic and functional. “It’s a Waterman. Sort of the Ferrari of pens.”

“I see,” Franklin said, clearly not seeing at all. “It’s important to have a good pen.”