Once upon a time, she’d loved that feeling.
Now she knew that it was just that—a feeling, and one that wasn’t based on a scrap of fact. She wasn’t special. Not to Jason.
She’d learned that the hard way when she’d shown up at his apartment with his favorite breakfast sandwich and her heart on her sleeve, only to realize that while she’d spent Saturday night at a rowdy wedding in Queens, shoving her way through the crowd to get the perfect shots, he’d had his own rowdy night in bed with a gorgeous brunette.
Leah would do well to remember that moment, standing on his porch, her dignity in pieces at her feet. She would be smart to remember the way her heart had literally hurt when she’d realized that the man she’d been falling in love with had been sleeping around on her.
Because right now, when he was sitting across the table from her, making easy conversation, even as he occasionally reached over to scoop up a bite of her risotto as though it were his right, it was hard to remember that he was a complete pig.
Hell, she wasn’t even sure how the heck they’d ended up there. She’d assumed dinner would be a quick bite at the hotel, but somehow she found herself in one of the trendiest restaurants in town, sharing a meal that felt very much like a date.
“So tell me what you’ve been up to in the year you’ve been avoiding me, Red,” he said as he topped off both of their glasses with an excellent Bordeaux.
“You mean in the year since you decided to cheat on me?” she shot back, not liking the way he continually spun their murky history to be entirely her fault.
His brown eyes flashed anger then, but she held up a hand to stop whatever he was going to say. “I know. I know, okay? We never agreed to be exclusive. I’ve spent the past several months trying to train my brain to remember that, so let’s just . . . let it go.”
“Leah—”
Her stomach flipped a little. He’d only ever called her Leah in bed. Otherwise it was always Red. “Please don’t,” she whispered.
The anger faded from his gaze, and his mouth flattened with something that looked like resignation. “Fine.”
She swallowed. “You asked how I was.”
He nodded slowly, and she felt a little stab of gratitude that he wasn’t going to force them down memory lane.
“I’ve been . . . good,” she said, swirling her wine. “Really good. Busy, but then I guess that’s the perk of our line of work, right? People will never stop falling in love.”
The corner of Jason’s mouth tilted up in amusement. “I forgot how you did that.”
“Did what?”
“Romanticize what we do.”
Leah tilted her head. “Well, it is romantic. We get to watch people promise to stay together forever.”
“Well sure, that’s what they promise.”
“And I’d forgotten how you did that,” Leah said. “Sprinkling all your jaded skepticism on something beautiful.”
“I deal in facts, Red. And the facts state—”
“That fifty percent of marriages end in divorce, I know,” she said with a little sigh. “But I choose to believe that the ones I photograph last forever. Your share of the pie can be the ones that end in divorce.”
He laughed. “And what about this one? What happens when we both work on a wedding? When all my bad vibes mingle with your Disney version?”
Leah pursed her lips. “Happiness wins.”
“It didn’t for us,” he said quietly.
Leah blinked a little in surprise at the seriousness in his voice.
For some reason she’d have thought that their brief time together would have barely registered for him.
Jason Rhodes’s life had been a rough one—that much she knew and couldn’t deny no matter how bad he’d screwed her over. Despite the fact that they’d only been together for a couple months, she’d talked with him more than with any other boyfriend she’d ever had.
Late into the night they’d stay cuddled in bed while he quietly told her about Afghanistan. About his friends’ deaths and the IED that had shredded his knee. He’d told her about growing up in the foster system, never at one home for more than a year before being shipped off to the next one.
Her heart had ached for him even as she admired how the man had refused to let himself become a victim. Nobody gets to control how life happens to us, Red. Only how we react to it.
And Leah had done some sharing of her own. About how she secretly feared her parents never loved their children as much as they loved each other. About how she’d spent most of her twenties thinking something was wrong with her because she’d wanted career success more than she’d wanted a boyfriend.
At least until she’d met him.