When Mo invited me to the wedding, I said ‘no.’ Technically, I said ‘no, thank you,’ but that was beside the point. The fact of the matter was, I couldn’t afford to go down to California, spend a ton of money on a nice dress, and pay for a hotel room. Mo refused to take ‘no’ for an answer and explained away all three of my dilemmas: Will would be going to California, since Thea was the flower girl and I could ride with him, no problem; I could buy a cheap dress from The Dress Shoppe in town, which sold beautiful dresses for any occasion for thirty dollars or less; and I could share a room with Will and Thea.

Despite how I felt about sharing a room with Will, I found I could not successfully argue with her reasoning and finally agreed to attend. She clapped her hands together and pulled me into a tight hug. Mo was comfortable with random bursts of physical affection. I was getting used to it.

The three weeks went by a lot faster than I originally anticipated. The wedding actually coincided with Thea’s spring break. We planned to drive down to California, which would take two days, and forced us to leave Thursday right after school rather than Friday. We hoped to get there early enough for us to have time for a nap and showers before getting ready and leaving.

Will actually took five days off specifically for this wedding: two to drive down, two to drive home, and an extra day for recuperating. Since preparing for this trip was so challenging, I’d taken the day off from my job as a teaching assistant to focus on packing. Together, Will and I went directly to Thea’s school after packing the car with our luggage. The only thing we needed was her.

Will managed to find a coveted parking spot outside of the school’s lot so we could avoid the pickup line. This also meant I was required to pick up Thea from the front, which was fine with me, considering I needed to stretch my legs anyway. And avoiding Will was a plus.

Not that Will wasn’t a fantastic employer. He was - even though he worked a lot. My issue was he was terribly good-looking and, despite himself, charming. I had a comfortable upbringing back home and there were certain expectations of the sort of man I should be with: sophisticated, educated, wealthy. Things that weren’t actually as easy as that. Perhaps that was why I decided to run off with Stan without much thought. Stan did not tick off any box in my family’s list of expectations. Being with him, marrying him, was my little show of rebellion.

And it completely backfired.

While Will was nothing like Stan, he didn’t tick off any boxes either. And after what happened with Stan, the last thing I wanted was to fall for my employer and endure rejection when I wasn’t one of his priorities. And I knew I wouldn’t be. If he couldn’t even prioritize his daughter most days - whether it was because he was so busy at work or because he avoided her so he did not have confront with the fact that Thea looked just like her mother - there was no way I would even make that list.

Which was perfectly fine.

“I’ll be back,” I called to Will as I got out of the car, zipping up my olive-green jacket. It was cold for an April afternoon, and I wished I had brought my scarf with me.

As I made my way up the hill of grass and over to the blue gates where Thea would emerge in ten minutes with her friends, my eyes caught sight of someone familiar.

My heart stopped.

What the hell was Stan doing here?

He still looked ruggedly handsome with his dark blond hair and scruff covering the lower half of his face. He wore a light blue T-shirt and jeans. The cold didn’t look as though it affected him in any way. Probably because he was used to being on the ocean frequently and the closer one was to the ocean, the colder the temperature.

I cleared my throat. I had no idea how to act. All of my exes were back in Pembroke. I never had to worry about running into them when I was home in Surrey so I never had to think about how to act.

Maybe, if God was good, Stan wouldn’t recognize me. It was only then did I wish I had one of those makeovers where I cut my hair short and dyed the locks brown. I still looked like the same sad fool he broke up with months ago.

“Beatrice?”

I snapped my head up in his direction and found myself looking directly into Stan’s brown eyes.

“Oh, Stan, hi, hello.” I clutched my hands behind my back, but I thought I looked awkward so I shoved them in my pockets. “Funny seeing you here.” I tilted my head. “Why are you here? Not that you don’t have a right to be here, of course. I just... Ahem.” I cleared my throat, but that didn’t work.

“Do you work here?” he asked, furrowing his brow. “Why are you here?”

Didn’t he know? If was he gone so often, did this piece of news didn’t reach him? Or, perhaps - and this seemed to be more likely - he simply didn’t care. It was unimportant so the information wasn’t worth retaining.

“Stan, have you seen Aiden? We have to be getting to my Mom’s if we’re going to miss traffic.”

I saw Susan Crawford walk up, hooking her arm around Stan’s waist.

I paled.

I hadn’t heard he started seeing Susan Crawford. Susan Crawford’s ex was a judge and the sheriff finally chased him out of town so she and her son were safe. Clearly, she had moved on with Stan, and Stan seemed much more domesticated with her than he ever had with me.

He forced a tight-lipped smile and walked closer to the gate with Susan.

The minute Thea came out, I was able to force a smile and lead her back to Will. California seemed wonderful now. I was looking forward to getting out of Washington, away from Stan and what could have been.