“No. I guess I don’t,” she said softly.
His chin rested briefly against his chest before he nodded once, twice, before moving away from her, scooping his jacket off the chair, and walking toward the front door.
She turned and watched him walk away, although she didn’t try to see him to the door. She wasn’t entirely sure her legs would work.
Cassidy turned back before moving out of her line of sight. “You used to be brave, Emma. What happened?”
“We happened. We’re no good for each other. There was no payoff in being brave. I’d rather be cautious.”
It hurts less.
He searched her face for a long moment before unexpectedly moving in her direction, stopping by the table to pick up both wineglasses. He handed one to her.
She took it in confusion, searching his face for an explanation, but his features were blank, his eyes cool. He clinked his glass to hers. “To moving on. To fucking distance.”
He took a long swallow before she had a chance to react, then turned away, setting his glass on the counter as he headed for the front door.
“Cassidy.”
He paused, turning back, and the flare of hope in his eyes was almost her undoing, but she didn’t tell him what he wanted to hear. She couldn’t.
“The last question,” she said. “For my article. Why did we break up?”
His eye shuttered, and his laugh was harsh. “Why did we break up? I’ll tell you why….The girl I loved—yes, loved, Emma—told me she didn’t want to marry me. In fact, she threw the engagement ring I spent four weeks picking out at my head.”
Emma sucked in a breath, and Cassidy shook his head sadly. “I’m sure you’ve got your version of what happened, but my version? My version ends with the girl who’d claimed to love me not even listening to me. I made a mistake. Yes. Mistakes. But you left me, Emma. Be sure you get that part right in your story.”
She heard the door open. Heard it shut. And still she didn’t move.
Her brain knew she’d just dodged a whole lot of heartache by ensuring their cold war raged on.
But her goal had been protecting her heart, and she was desperately afraid that it was too late for that.
That it had been too late from the day she’d met him.
Chapter 18
“Scale of one to ten, how painful is this?” Riley asked, appearing at Emma’s side.
Emma glanced at her friend. “It’s not painful.”
Much.
Okay, it was painful. No. Pain didn’t begin to describe it. Emma was in agony.
Riley’s grin flashed, her teeth white against the siren red lipstick that bumped up her already-bombshell status to the stratosphere. The short black dress wasn’t so bad, either.
“Come on, Ems. You know you want to vent to someone.”
Emma pursed her lips as she pulled one of the glasses of wine off the small bar set up in the corner of the private room where Julie and Mitchell were having their rehearsal dinner.
“I figured it would be bad,” Emma admitted. “I’ve been mentally pep-talking myself for days.”
“Yeah?” Riley asked, grabbing a glass of wine for herself and tugging Emma over to the corner of the room where they could talk.
“Yeah,” Emma said. She took a sip of her wine, her eyes scanning the crowded room even as they purposefully avoided Cassidy.
“And?” Riley prodded. “Was it as awful as you thought?”
This time Emma’s eyes did land on Cassidy, looking handsome and completely at ease as he talked with Julie’s aunt and uncle on the far side of the room.
“It’s worse, Ri.”
Her friend made a motherly clucking noise and put an arm around Emma’s waist. “I strapped a flask to my thigh for exactly this sort of situation.”
“It’s an open bar,” Emma pointed out.
Riley squeezed her shoulders. “Honey, you’re at your best friend’s rehearsal dinner with your ex-fiancé. And the best I can tell, your rehearsal dinner was when everything went south?”