“How’s the search going?”

Julia springs the question on me while we’re walking back from lunch, on the way to Cash Industries’ Midtown offices.

“For new properties?”

She rolls her eyes and gives a long-suffering sigh. “For your mystery woman.”

“She’s not a mystery.”

“You don’t want me to say her name.”

“I never said that.”

“You said it with your eyes.”

“Sure, Julia. Sure.”

We walk in silence for less than ten seconds before she’s back at it. “Did you even try looking for her? Did you search for her on social media?”

“I could look her up in the phone book. Do you think that would help?”

Julia laughs at the idea of a physical phone book. “You seem a little calmer about all of it, anyway.”

Calm is not the right word to describe how I’m feeling. Numb would be more accurate. Even lunch at my favorite diner wasn’t enough to snap me out of it.

“I’m very calm.”

Julia shoots me a look. “You’re something.” She pulls out her phone. “I’ll look her up. That’ll be easiest.”

I reach out to bat her phone away from her hands but she twists, holding it toward the street. “Jesus, Charlie! That’s my phone!”

“That’s my life,” I tell her. “Do not look her up. If I want to find her, I’ll get around to it. Now isn’t a good time.”

It’s not a good time because I’m still so pissed at her that I could die. At least, I am when I don’t feel like a television playing a channel that’s gone off the air. 

But Julia has a point. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as I thought. Maybe I owe it to Josephine to find her and see her one more time before we part ways for good. 

No. No, I don’t owe her.

Me, on the other hand? I might owe it to myself to see her again. That way I can be absolutely sure she was never worth it in the first place. 

“Stop,” I say out loud.

“What?” 

“Never mind.”

“Hey, look,” says Julia, pointing. The guy who sells flowers mid-block has new supply at his place. “I want a bouquet for my office.”

“Great.” It sounds sarcastic, but I don’t bother to apologize.

“You’re an ass sometimes, do you know that?”

“You’re not the first one to tell me that.”

Julia shakes her head and moves across to the flowers, picking through the bouquets in plastic buckets that line the sidewalk. I stick my hands in my pockets and try not to think of Josephine.

We’ve stopped in front of a strip of New York City sidewalk that has not one but three bars nestled up against each other, all of them offering a different experience to their patrons. The one on the left is a wine bar, all white and modern on the inside, the giant glass windows out from letting the summer sunlight pour in. The one on the right is somewhere upscale pretending to be a dive bar. And the one in the middle, directly in front of me, with a tiled entryway and Christmas lights strung up toward the back, looks like it would fit right in at Emerald Shores.

The sense of recognition is so strong that it takes my breath away. The windows facing the street are large enough that the inside of the bar is bathed in a gentle glow.

So gentle that it’s making me hallucinate, somehow.

Because she’s there, at the bar, sitting alone.

And the outfit she’s wearing is the same color as the one she wore that first night, when she threw up on my shoes and came back to my room with me. Her hair is piled on top of her head in an arrangement that looks casually perfect.

It can’t be Josephine.

It looks just like her, from the back. It looks like the curve of her ass, the shade of her hair, and the creamy skin on the back of her neck that’s exposed to the light from outside. 

She sits up straight and tall, like she doesn’t need anyone or anything, and it’s a knife through my heart. It shouldn’t be. We were never together, and it’s been a month since she almost snared herself a rich husband.

I don’t care. I don’t care at all, I tell myself, three times, then five.

But I do.

I fucking do.

I care so much that seeing her doppelgänger is giving me vertigo.

The woman turns to the side, glancing at something in a booth nearby, and my heart stops.

It is her.

She looks different—professional, put-together—but here she is, sitting at the bar on what has to be her lunch hour, idly stirring at her cocktail, the way she did a hundred times at the resort.

“What are you staring at?” Julia looks down at her purse and tries to rearrange the bouquet in the massive bag. “This doesn’t fit—”

“Josephine.”

“My name is Julia.”

“No. It’s Josephine.” I nod my head in the direction of the bar, and Julia squints at the front window.

“Holy shit,” she breathes. “You have to go in and talk to her. This is once in a lifetime. I can’t believe that’s her!” She looks up at me, worry in her eyes. “Are you sure that’s her?” 

I cut a sharp glance at her.

“Okay,” says Julia. “It’s her. What are you going to say?”

My chest feels like it’s caving in on itself. “I’m...not going to say anything.”

“You’re not getting out of this.”

“Let’s go back to the office.”

“Charlie, don’t be a dumbass.”

“I’m not. I can’t get caught up in this again.”

Julia grabs me by the shoulders, using all her weight to turn me so I’m facing her. “Getting caught up in that was the best thing that happened to you in years. I can tell, because you were so devastated about it that it’s still killing you. Talk to her.”

“She won’t have anything to say to me.”

“You don’t know that.”

Julia hikes her purse up onto her shoulder and steps around me. “I’m going back to the office. You’re staying here.” Then she glances down at her watch. “It’s twelve thirty. If she’s on her lunch hour, there’s not much time left. Don’t waste it.”

“This is a terrible idea,” I call after her, but when I turn to see if she’s still looking at me, she’s already hidden by the crowd on the sidewalk.

“Charlie?” At the sound of her voice, a flush of heat takes over my entire body. Heart pounding, I face the door of the bar. There’s Josephine, looking at me, hurt and desire combined in her eyes. “What are you doing here?”