Colin

---

The words were a physical blow to Colin’s gut. He knew CeCe was hurt. That he’d hurt her. But frankly, they’d hurt each other and to actually hear her speak words like that aloud was brutal.

On what?

On ever seeing you again.

Like an idiot, he’d pressed her, and like a moron, he’d expected to hear something different. Some explanation for why she’d left him for his best friend. Why the woman he’d imagined spending the rest of his life with had betrayed him so deeply and then abandoned him.

“Well you nearly accomplished it,” he said. “Do you live in San Francisco now? Or was that just a stopover?”

She sighed. “Are we really doing this?”

“Doing what?”

“Small talk.” Her words were like ice, little frosty bullets that threatened to wound. “Pretending to be old friends.”

His hold on his temper was getting decidedly thinner. He bent so his nose was nearly pressed to hers. “You left, sweetheart. You left me. So if anyone has a right to be pissed, it’s me. I needed you, and you fucking left.”

Her shoulders had risen with each of his snapped statements until they were practically covering her ears. He’d hated when she’d done that, curling into herself, protecting rather than fighting.

But then her shoulders dropped and her temper joined the party. “I left? I. Left? You—” Her eyes closed for a heartbeat and he watched a deep breath slide through her lungs. “You know what? It doesn’t matter.”

It mattered to him. A whole hell of a lot.

But she was still talking and he soaked up all the information he could.

“I live north of the city. I’ve”—she shook her head—“I was at loose ends for a while, but then I got the job as a nanny. Hunter is the sweetest boy.”

Her lips curved, teasing him, reminding him of how it had been to kiss that smile, to twine his hand through her hair, tug her close, and feel those lips against his.

“He got sick pretty young and needed a heart transplant. But he got one last year and—”

Colin touched her hand when she faltered and those green eyes went shiny with tears.

“He’s just so much better now. Healthy and running and . . . I just love him so much.” She sniffed. “But he doesn’t need me anymore and so I’m”—she laughed darkly—“God, I don’t even know why I’m telling you any of this.”

“Except that maybe I understand what it’s like to be at a crossroads.”

CeCe froze and glanced up at him. After a moment, she murmured, “Yeah. I suppose you would.”

“How are your parents?”

It was the wrong question. Her face closed down, and she slipped her hand out from beneath his, clutching it to her chest as though he’d burned her.

And maybe he had.

“They’re fine.”

“Cecilia.” He reached for her again, cursing under his breath when she cringed away from him. “What happened?”

“You know what happened,” she said, her words soft and yet somehow more piercing than her harsh tone from earlier. “They said if I went they were done.” A shrug. “And I went.”

“What?” He’d expected them to have come to their senses, to have put aside the grudge they’d harbored when she’d chosen not go to their preferred college.

How could they have shut her out?

An unpleasant feeling unfurled in his stomach. Same way he had, he supposed.

She laughed, but it sounded off. “Oh, Colin.” The pity was palpable. “I know you’re used to breaking your promises, but there are plenty of people who hold firm to theirs.” Another laugh, this one filled with so much fatigue that it physically made his heart ache. “And my parents have always been nothing but firm.”

His tongue was glued to the roof of his mouth. She implied that he’d broken his promises? She was the one who’d betrayed him and then left. But more than that, how could her parents have abandoned her? How could they have just left her to make her own way because she hadn’t done exactly as they wished?

What the fuck was wrong with them?

He hadn’t realized that he’d spoken the last aloud until CeCe touched his hand. “I knew what I was getting into. And I was a grown woman. It was time that I found my own way.”

“You were twenty.”

She pulled her hand back, twisting in her seat so that she faced him, but also so she was physically as far as possible from him. “An adult.”

He scoffed. “A foolish one.” Everyone was an idiot at twenty.

Hurt flashed across her emerald eyes, but she nodded before saying softly, “Yes. Yes, I was.”

The foolish for trusting him was only implied, but it still weighted the air between them.

“Why did you leave me? Why did you run off with Ewan?” He finally asked it outright, needing to hear it from her lips. Maybe then—

Maybe what?

“You really don’t remember?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I remember the whiskey. I remember seeing the papers, the journal, the pictures. But the rest of it is black.” He thrust a hand through his hair. “When I woke up, you were gone. And I couldn’t find you.”

“Colin.” She sighed. “I can’t do this. Not again.”

Another clench of his gut. “But—”

She waved a hand through the air in a slicing motion. “I had to go. Can’t we just leave it at that?”

No. They damn well couldn’t. Not when he’d pictured her in his arms for eternity. Not when he’d imagined their children. Not when he’d fantasized about waking every morning next to her. Not when—

“And it was for the best anyway. We were too young, too immature. It would have never worked out.”

“It would have worked out.” He pressed his thumb to her lips when she opened her mouth to protest. “I would have bloody well fought tooth and nail to make it work.”

Her eyes filled with tears again, making those green irises shine with a force that hit him exactly where it hurt.

“Except you didn’t fight for me, Colin.” She yanked her head back. “You didn’t.”