Those goddamned yoga pants were burned into my brain. Right along with her declaration on Thanksgiving.

“I miss you, Deacon. You were the most important person in my life and I lost you… twice. I hate that. I hate how things are between us.”

It had been a week and I still couldn’t remembered every single word like it had been yesterday. They were the very words I’d been dying to hear for so long. But fuck me if they didn’t come at the worst possible time.

I couldn’t go there, not again. That woman had crushed my heart one too many times, and despite the ever-present gnawing desire in my gut, I’d be a fool to go there again.

But everything she said rang true. Before I fell in love with Fiona, she’d been my best friend, the most important person to me. She was the one safe place I had to land when feeling like an outsider in my own home became too much to bear. Growing up, no matter how hard I tried, I’d always felt like I was the odd man out, the black sheep of the family.

My older brother Grayson could do no wrong. The smart one, the wunderkind, the son who was going to, one day, take over Bandwidth Communications from my father and carry on the Lockhart legacy.

I was the troublemaker. I was the one who got into fights at school, the one whose parents had to be called to the principal’s office because I was failing a class or had back-talked a teacher.

I couldn’t tell you how many time my father had looked at me with that gut-wrenching disapproval stamped on his face and muttered those words I’d always dreaded.

“Why can’t you just behave, son? Why can’t you be more like your brother?”

I didn’t want to be anything like Grayson. I wanted to be my own person, not the carbon copy of my big brother—who was basically a mini Nolan Lockhart.

The funny thing was, if they had quit trying to turn me into something that I wasn’t, I never would’ve gotten into those millions of scrapes as a kid.

Don’t get me wrong, my family loved me—there was no question there—but I’d never been able to escape the underlying disappointment that weighed down the air in our house like a dense fog. So eventually I just stopped trying.

I turned my back on the family company, deciding to venture out and do something I wanted to do. It broke Dad’s heart, but the thought of being stuck behind a desk day in and day out for the rest of my life was suffocating. I couldn’t work like that. I needed to be free, not chained to an office.

When I decided to open my bar, my parents and brother thought it was just another way for me to rebel against the family. That couldn’t have been further from the truth. All I’d ever wanted to be was my own boss. I wanted to own something that was solely mine and not tied to the Lockhart name. It had nothing to do with sticking it to my folks, and everything to do with me pursuing something that made me happy.

However, as the years had passed, I’d learned that trying to explain these feelings was pointless, so I’d given up. If they wanted to think everything I did was to spite them, then I’d let them.

I could deal with their displeasure because I had Fiona. She was mine. I never burdened her with my family drama because it was so easy to forget about anything and everything that wasn’t us when she was around. There was a sense of peace when I was in her presence that didn’t exist anywhere else.

And then she went and fell in love with my perfect brother. I knew I shouldn’t have blamed her. I’d kept my feelings for her a secret for years, convinced that the timing of my confession had to be absolutely perfect. Then and only then would I tell her the truth; that I’d been in love with her all my life. She had no clue. But that didn’t matter. My heart was broken nonetheless. I viewed her falling for Grayson as the ultimate betrayal.

Years passed, and I did my damnedest to move on. Eventually the pain began to fade. Like most young relationships, she and Gray hadn’t lasted. He was now married to the only woman I’d ever met who had the balls to take him on head to head and give him a dose of his own medicine.

I’d finally started to heal. My relationship with my brother was still shaky, but it was getting better with each passing day. I had been knocked down by the woman I loved not once, but twice. The first time when she fell from my brother. The second when I finally told her the truth and she’d pushed me away. It had taken a lot to get myself to the place I was now, and hearing her confess how much she missed me on Thanksgiving had rocked me to my goddamned core.

Deep down, I knew I was probably better off letting her go completely. I just couldn’t. No matter how hard I tried, no matter how many times I told myself that I was better off, I just couldn’t let her go. She’d been mine for years. Mine.

Then I lost her.

That had been a pain unlike anything I’d ever felt. But I had learned my lesson. I was moving on and guarding my heart. I was older and wiser now, and maybe, just maybe enough time had passed and I could have my best friend back.

These were the thoughts rolling around in my head when I pulled into my driveway. It wasn’t until I put my car in Park next to Leah’s that I realized I’d left the goddamned grocery store without the items I’d stopped to get in the first place. “Shit.”

Things with Leah had been tense since Thanksgiving, when she’d walked in on that moment I’d been having with Fee. Since then she’d been pushing to take our relationship to the next level, attempting to secure her spot as the woman in my life. Things grew even more tense when I told her, in no uncertain terms, that there was no way I was ready for us to move in together.

I wasn’t sure how much longer the relationship was going to last. If I was being honest, I probably should’ve called in quits when I started questioning whether or not I saw her in my future, but she’d let the subject drop, and we were both working toward getting us back to that comfortable place we’d once been in.

She called earlier that day to tell me her plans to cook me dinner at my place. I’d just left the bar when I got a text from her asking me to stop and pick up a few ingredients she’d forgotten, but seeing Fiona in those fucking skintight leggings had rendered my brain useless.

I climbed from the car as my mind worked overtime to come up with a plausible excuse. I didn’t feel like fighting tonight, and if I so much as mentioned Fiona’s name, I knew I wouldn’t hear the end of it.

“Hey, babe,” Leah chirped as I pushed open the back door that led straight into the kitchen. The place was a goddamned disaster. Pots and pans scattered everywhere. Dishes I hadn’t even realized I owned lay filthy in the overflowing sink. The remnants of something I couldn’t identify by look alone was splattered all over the countertop by the stove.

“Jesus, Leah. What the fuck?”

She looked around at the mess that took up my entire kitchen. “Don’t worry, I’ll clean up when I’m done. Did you get the oregano and cilantro?”

“Uh….” I scratched at the back of my neck. “They were out. Sorry.”

Her eyebrows dipped into a deep V. “They were out? Of both?”

“Yeah.” I felt like shit for lying. I felt like shit for a lot of things when it came to Leah. My head shouldn’t be this fucked up over someone else when I was in a relationship.

“That’s okay.” She smiled brightly, and that ball of guilt in my gut grew even bigger. “It’s not a big deal. I’m sure I can substitute them for something else. Or….” She scanned the chaos all around her. “Maybe just leave it out.”

She sounded unsure, like she had no idea how the meal she was preparing was going to turn out.

I couldn’t keep the uncertainty out of my voice as I asked, “Uh, so what is it you’re making, exactly?” If the sight of the kitchen wasn’t bad enough, the smell wasn’t all that welcoming either. It was like a combination of dirty gym socks and rotten, burning garbage. I was actually scared to eat it.

“It’s a surprise.” She grinned excitedly, not bothered in the slightest that the stench of whatever she was concocting was actually burning the hairs in my nostrils. “You’ll just have to wait and see,” she finished playfully as she sauntered toward me and stood on her tiptoes to press a kiss to my lips.

I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t. She looked so goddamn happy to see me, and was busting her ass to try and be the perfect girlfriend… I couldn’t keep up the charade any longer. That ball of guilt was going to grow and grow until it consumed me from the inside out.

“Leah, sweetheart, can you stop for a second?”

She set the spoon in her hand down and gave me her full attention. Her pretty face fell in a frown. She knew what was coming. Odds were she’d been expecting it, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t going to hurt.

“You know I care about you—”

Leah raised her hand to stop me before I could finish my sentence. “Don’t,” she said in a pained whisper. “Don’t do that. Don’t say shit like that to make yourself feel better. Just spit it out.”

Jesus, I was such a fucking asshole. “I can’t do this anymore. It has nothing to do with you, swear to God—”

A sarcastic bark of laughter erupted from Leah’s throat. “‘It’s not you, it’s me.’ God, Deacon, could you be any more of a cliché? Just say it like it is. It’s because of Fiona, isn’t it? You have feelings for her.”

“There’s nothing going on between me and Fiona. Never will be.”

Her head tilted to the side as her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “That wasn’t a no, Deac. That was just a clever way of getting around the question. Do… you… have… feelings… for… her?”

My skin prickled, my hands clenched into tight fists. “Yes,” I finally admitted on a ragged whisper. “But that doesn’t mean anything. She and I will only ever be friends. There’s too much water under the bridge there.”

She shook her head, staring at me as if I were the most naïve person on the planet. “If you really believe that, then you’re more clueless than I thought.”

I opened my mouth to ask what the hell she was talking about, but it was too late. She stormed out of the kitchen, snatching her coat and purse from the couch. “For your sake, Deacon,” she started as she jabbed her arms through the sleeves of her jacket, “I really hope you get your shit together before it’s too late.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you either need to make it work with her or move the fuck on.”

I gripped the edge of the counter separating us so tightly that it was a wonder the granite didn’t snap off in my hands. “I have moved on.”

Leah’s deep chuckle grated at my skin. “Totally fucking clueless,” she muttered.

She brushed past me on her way to the back door, and I came unfrozen from my spot just as she reached for the knob. “I didn’t mean for it to be like this.”

Leah looked at me over her shoulder and issued her parting shot. “I think you believe that. But the truth is it’s always going to be her. Word to the wise, Deacon, don’t start anything with another woman. Until you’ve really let go of the dream of the wonderful Fiona Prentice, you’re just going to keep hurting people in your pathetic attempt to lie to yourself. Oh, and you can clean your own fucking kitchen.”

Then she was gone, leaving me reeling.