Ward and I were working through the evening rush when my phone pinged. The whole day had been non-stop madness, and I hadn’t had a break in hours, let alone managed to tell Ward I was quitting. It was the busiest we’d been in months. I wasn’t used to the noise since it wasn’t my usual alert tone, and I looked down at it in confusion. An icon I had almost forgotten about was demanding my attention. Lucas’ app.

I frowned at my phone. What did the app want? I hadn’t messed with Lucas’ dating app at all since Emma installed it on my phone the night before. She was at the bar tonight, across the room laughing with Lucas and Lily at a table. Too far away. I would just figure it out myself. I clicked the app.

A little chime played and then Cole’s face appeared on my screen. You have a new match, my phone informed me in animated blue text on a cheerful, cartoon background. Cole Rylander is within two hundred feet of you. A tiny cartoon heart turned in a circle and then exploded into a thousand more rainbow hearts.

I froze. Lucas’ dating app matched me with Cole? And he’s here? My heart immediately started banging in my rib cage. The noise and commotion of the bar receded around me in an instant. I felt hot and cold, like when I’d had a panic attack on the fiftieth floor. I had not expected to see Cole tonight. He hadn’t been to the bar all month, and I thought that we had an unspoken arrangement that this was my territory and not his.

How dare he come here? How dare he—

“Hi Kate.” The voice ripped my attention up from Cole’s image on my phone and to the real thing. He smiled at me confidently, wearing that same look that he’d worn on the day of Ward and Emma’s engagement party. The one that said, ‘I know you want me, Kate’. In that crisp blue button down and sexy, slouchy jeans, he was absolutely right.

And absolutely wrong.

“Can I get you something?” I asked blandly, putting on my patented bartender smile. Inside I was shaking, but at least on the outside, I was all business. My smile, tone, and demeanor were not too warm or not too sweet. I’d carefully designed and practiced this act to discourage the guys who thought I wanted to date them when I really just wanted a good tip. I never thought I’d need to use it on Cole.

He was totally undeterred by my professionalism. “How about fifteen minutes of your time?” he asked. Cole’s amber-colored eyes were full of that same, familiar heat. The kind that made me restless, flushed, and wanton. Even now, all I could think about when he looked at me that way was rolling over and spreading my legs for him. And I suspected, from the way his grin widened a bit and crinkled the edges of his eyes, that he knew it.

I cleared my throat and shifted from foot to foot. “Sorry, that’s not on our menu. Anything else?” I wasn’t trying to be rude, but there were about ten people trying to get my attention at the moment because they wanted beer, and my poor battered heart couldn’t handle seeing him yet.

“Kate…”

“Cole. Just… please,” I begged. My cool bartender attitude slipped, and my voice cracked. I sounded heartbroken, because I was. I hated that it happened. I hated that he saw it even more. And not just him, either. In this busy bar, a dozen people got to see me fight back tears.

“Fifteen minutes, Kate. That’s all I’m asking you for.” I was going to tell him no, of course, but then he added, “and if you want me to leave at that point, I will. And I won’t come back.” His tone was self-assured, but his eyes held a vulnerability I wasn’t used to seeing.

Despite my better instincts, I softened. “I’ll meet you in the office in five minutes,” I told him, trying to maintain my bland persona as best I could. “I still have a few orders to get out.”

He nodded and wandered off, leaving me with six drinks to make and a lot of anxiety. My hands had already been pulling beers as fast as I could, but I kicked it into overdrive. I was shaking a martini shaker, garnishing, and refilling waters at the same time to buy those precious fifteen minutes.

“Can I get a margarita over here?” A customer snapped down the bar at me. “Or do I have to watch your entire relationship drama play out first?” She tapped her long nails along the bar like Cruella De-Ville and mumbled something about me being a lazy slut.

Oh hell no.

“Go fuck yourself,” I snapped right back. “Just for that, no drink for you.” A couple of regulars laughed. Just because I was heartbroken didn’t mean anyone got to push me around. I was still me, and I didn’t take shit from anybody. The woman slunk away from the bar, flushing purple. I turned to another customer that had been waiting even longer, and much more patiently. “Sorry about the wait. What can I get for you?” I asked him with a smile.

I found Cole seated at Ward’s desk, looking more like the CEO of a dealership empire than a pro athlete. He’d either adjusted surprisingly quickly to the business life, or had been born for it, because the man looked good behind a desk. I left the door open, fearing trouble if I let it close. We’d gotten to trouble on that desk before.

“Ok, here I am,” I told him, darting my gaze at the clock on the wall, “your fifteen minutes starts now.”

“I’m lucky I work well under pressure,” Cole said coolly, “because a lesser man wouldn’t be able to handle this sort of stress.” If I didn’t know him, I would have thought he was perfectly at ease. His smirk was sexy, but I could still see that there was vulnerability in him.

Outside in the bar I could be tough, but in here I was still an insecure little girl. I didn’t trust myself to say anything, so I just arched an eyebrow, crossed my arms, and stared. Maybe if I looked tough, I could convince myself I was tough. Maybe, I could even convince Cole.

“When you asked me out all those years ago, I was crazy about you,” he told me. He shook his head with some emotion I couldn’t place. “I lied to you. When you asked me if I liked you, and I told you that I was just being polite, I lied. I was stupid, and young. I was trying to make sure I had a future, and I was trying to make sure you had a future. I knew that there was no way for us to be together back then. So, I drove you off. But I was in love you. Even back then. It was always you.” He fell silent and looked at me.

My heart hurt. Before I couldn’t trust myself to find words to say, but now I couldn’t find any. I’d been rendered completely mute. He loved me? Even back then he cared? Cole glanced at the clock nervously and continued.

“I didn’t know you were a virgin that night. I’ve got absolutely no excuse for how I behaved. I’m sorry. I hope I didn’t hurt you, I... Please believe me that I never, ever would have hurt you like that on purpose. I probably wasn’t as gentle as I should have been and if I hurt you…” His voice broke painfully. He looked down at the desk in front of him, and all his former confidence seemed to drain out of him.

Rationally, I knew he was still the same man, but he seemed to shrink into himself from guilt. He tried to meet my eyes and failed before burying his head in his hands. I melted in an instant, coming over to touch his shoulder with a shaking hand. “You didn’t hurt me,” I whispered. “It’s ok. I swear you never hurt me. Not at all. It’s ok.”

He looked at me, wide-eyed, and shook his head. “How could it possibly be ok? I told you that you were just a distraction to me. You were—”

“Willing,” I interrupted. “Cole, I was willing. I was a grown up making a grown up, sober decision about my own body and my own life.” No matter what, this was the truth and he needed to believe it. I would make him believe it.

“But I—”

“No!” I wasn’t willing to let him hate himself over a decision made a half decade ago at a college party. “Stop it. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and don’t you dare pity me. You know how much I hate it.” I stared at him so obstinately, he had to smile, even if it was a humorless, tiny smile.

“Kate, why don’t you hate me over how I took your virginity?” he asked after a moment. He was looking at me like I was nuts. “I would understand if you did. I would deserve it.”

“Because you didn’t take shit from me,” I snapped. “Virginity is not a commodity. Anything we exchanged that night was freely given. This isn’t the middle ages. It’s not like I was expecting you to marry me or something. We were two kids at a party who had one night of meaningless sex on a golf course. The end.”

That shut him up. The seconds ticked by as we stared at one another across a chasm of misunderstanding, recrimination, and guilt.

“Meaningless?” he finally asked. “It wasn’t meaningless to me. I loved you then. I love you now.” His voice was low and earnest.

Now I was the one to regret my words. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. My whole life was revolving around this moment. “It wasn’t meaningless to me either,” I admitted. “I loved you. That night was special to me, really special. I thought you would never feel anything for me like what I felt for you, but at least for that little while, you were mine.” Emotion was making my words sound thick in my own ears. I wanted Cole to believe me so badly I wanted to shake him by the shoulders and scream at him. The idea that he would think I’d not enjoyed every second of our intimacy was criminally wrong.

“You don’t know how much I wanted to call you the next day and confess everything. I almost did.” His eyes were begging me to believe him, too. “I should have.”

Despite everything, I giggled. “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course, you shouldn’t have.” He looked up at me in disbelief. I shook my head at him, wondering what sort fantasy world he thought we lived in. This wasn’t a fairy tale. “You did the right thing. You were about to graduate to play in the NFL. I’m…” I laughed again, feeling ridiculous. “I’m not good enough for you. I never was.”

There. I’d said it.

Now he knew the truth. The whole, ugly truth. The real, secret truth.

The thing I didn’t want to admit even to myself.

I wasn’t good enough for Cole.

Why else would he not want me? He was perfect, but me? I was ordinary. Average. Disposable.

I stared at him, shocked at myself for admitting the truth, and there was an equal amount of shock in Cole’s eyes. Then he laughed. I stepped back, astounded and instantly offended. Before I could lash out, Cole grabbed my hands and pulled me back to him. He swept me up in a hug so powerful that I could barely breathe. I squeaked in surprise.

“You’re not good enough for me?” His voice was totally and completely appalled. “That’s so fucking off-base it’s not even funny. I’m not even fit to be in the same room with you. I love you though. Please, please take me back. Will you, Kate? Will you give us another shot?” He had both of my hands and stared up at me with so much affection and tenderness that it hurt to see.

All my childhood, I struggled with not being good enough. My family was poor, I was the second, less-talented child, and my dad took off like my brother, my mom and I were all disposable. As a young woman, I learned that men who seemed to care could easily cast me aside. Even the good guys, like Cole, might not want me or stick around. But knowing that he loved me—that he’d always cared and wanted to be with me—it changed everything I thought I knew about the world. It changed what I thought I knew about myself.

I don’t cry a lot. I’m not a very weepy girl in general because my usual response to feeling pain is to lash out and cause some of my own. But now I was fighting big, fat, hot, ugly tears. They crawled down my face in ecstasy while I nodded yes. My response to realigning my worldview in a positive way was a good, old fashioned, ugly cry. I smiled and laughed through my tears.

Cole pulled me into his arms and laughed, rocking me back and forth like a baby. I could feel the relief radiating off him in waves. We were two real pieces of work, him and me. Neither one of us seemed to believe we were worth a damn thing. At least we had each other to remind the other it wasn’t true.

A familiar call of a distant “Kate where the hell are you? We’re slammed out here!” followed by a much closer “What the fuck?” made me lift my head off Cole’s chest. Ward was standing in the doorway. His face was a mask of total, dumbstruck horror.

Cole and I were both red-faced balls of emotion, clutching at one another in the desk chair. This was not a flattering way to be caught by my brother (although it could be worse, all things considered). His eyebrows were so high they were about to be swallowed by his hairline and his jaw was slack. I could see a white ring all the way around his blue pupils. He backed up and out of the office without another word. Clearly, he did not want to deal with whatever very private, extremely emotional thing was going on in here between his sister and his best friend. He disappeared around the corner, still walking backward.

“You know, I feel like I should have taken a photo of your brother’s face just now,” Cole said to me after Ward had gone. Humor had returned to his voice, and I knew that we were going to be ok. “I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen Ward be struck truly speechless. That was a first.”

“I know. We’ll probably never see it again, either, since he’s gonna be too busy bitching about seeing us like this for the rest of his life.”