too deeply to ever take that kind of chance again.
Oh, Lane dated. Casually. She liked men. But she liked them in their own space, and not in hers. She liked them to fill a manageable portion of her life. To fulfill a physical need and that vague emotional craving for romance that she sometimes got, particularly around Valentine’s Day or the holidays.
Someone to go to parties with. Someone to go out to dinner with. Someone who might bring her flowers and tell her she was pretty. To kiss her and make her feel good.
She’d had boyfriends since leaving Massachusetts. Some of them had even lasted quite a while. But they had never been serious. Not in the sense of her imagining they would become anything long-term.
The very idea of a husband, of children, made her feel sick inside.
It was a future she couldn’t have.
A future she didn’t deserve.
Without permission, a vision of Cord McCaffrey and his family flitted in front of her mind’s eye. His beautiful wife, his two darling children.
Her throat tightened, bile rising in it. Why did it hurt so much? Why did it still hurt so damn much?
Or rather, why did it hurt again after so many years of lying dormant? It was his fault. For being in the public eye like this. For bringing it all up again.
“Well,” Alison said, too brightly. Lane figured she had been traveling down her own dark road just then. “Congratulations, Rebecca. I can’t wait for you to officially accept his proposal.”
“Me either,” Rebecca said. “I would never have thought... Well, I would never have thought that I would get married. Not in a million years. And I really never thought that I would marry him. For obvious reasons.”
The reasons being that Gage had been responsible for a terrible accident that Rebecca had been in when she was a child.
Lane didn’t possess that kind of capacity for forgiveness. But she had to admit that theirs was a rare case. Where both of them had been lost in the past, continually punishing themselves for something neither of them was truly at fault for. So in the end it was better they had let it go.
Lane just couldn’t quite fathom how they had let it go with each other.
More power to Rebecca, though.
Nothing had proven more clearly to Lane that she still had an iron grip on the past than Cord’s recent resurgence.
“Crap,” Alison said suddenly. “I was going to bring a couple trays of chocolate croissants that I had left over in the bakery. Can someone help me carry them?” Alison was looking meaningfully at Lane.
“Sure,” Lane said.
“Be right back,” Alison said, leading the way out of the small coffee shop.
It was dark outside, and the streetlamps—made to look like old-fashioned gas lamps—were lit, casting a bright orange glow on the sidewalk. Most of the cars were gone, and the ones that were parked up against the curb likely belonged to people who had walked down the street to Beaches, Copper Ridge’s fanciest restaurant.
Or they had all done a park and ride to Ace’s bar or brewery.
Lane tugged on her sweater, pulling it closer to her skin. Once the sun sank into the ocean, nights were cold and invariably a bit damp when the mist rolled in off the sea. “I thought you might need a little bit of reprieve from those who are one half of a happy couple,” Alison said, her tone dry.
“Is it that obvious?” Lane asked, keeping step with her friend, then pausing while Alison unlocked the door to the bakery.
“Not really. I just assumed you might feel like I did. Come on in.” Lane walked in behind Alison, the room cast in darkness, the tables and chairs inky shadows on the light wood floor. The bakery case was empty, as were all the display cases that were normally full to the brim of pastries and breads.
“I really do have a tray of croissants,” Alison said, setting her keys on the table before heading into the back. Lane lingered in the main dining area for a while, and then followed her friend.
“Admittedly I’m a little bit of a relationship Scrooge,” Lane said, leaning against the kitchen door.
“I’m a lot of one,” Alison returned. “Here,” she said, handing a wide bakery tray laden with croissants to Lane. Then she turned back into the kitchen and reappeared a moment later holding her own. “See, I’m not a liar. I just have a convenient memory.”
They both walked back out into the dining room and Alison set the tray down for a moment so that she could grab her keys.
“Do you think you’re ever going to date again?” Lane asked.
She couldn’t see Alison’s expression, but she had a feeling it was a frown. “I don’t know. I like being by myself,” she said finally. “Nobody gets to tell me what to do. Nobody makes decisions about what I’m going to wear or where I’m going to go. I lost myself in Jared. So deeply that I never thought I would find me again. I wasn’t even sure who I was. It took so long to resurface. To let go of all that fear, that baggage... I don’t know. The idea of sacrificing any of my freedom just seems crazy to me.”
Lane chewed on her bottom lip. “I totally understand that. But sex.”
Alison laughed. “Yeah, that’s a whole separate issue.”
“Have you... You know, since?”
Alison shook her head. “No. Like I said, it took a long time to sort out my own stuff. So, for the time being I’m committed to... Sorting out my own stuff. In every way that applies.”
Lane thought back to all of the tension from earlier. To what had happened with Finn. How she had felt jittery and hollow, and needy in a way that she hadn’t really associated with wanting sex before.
She grimaced. “I guess that’s why some industrious person created vibrators.”
Alison laughed uneasily. “I don’t have one of those.”
“Seriously?” Lane rocked back on her heels. “Doesn’t every woman have one? Every red-blooded single American woman with a career and not enough time for a man?”
“Not this one,” Alison returned.
“Me neither,” Lane admitted. “Which I always thought was weird. Because according to every romantic comedy I’ve seen in recent years we should all have them.”
“Vibrator hype,” Alison said. “I would rather have the real thing.” She shook her head. “Of course, I’m much more likely to get a vibrator than an actual man.”
Lane sighed heavily. It had been a long time since she had dated anybody. Which translated to it being even longer since she’d had sex. More than a year. Way more.
“I think that’s my problem,” she said finally.
“You have a problem?” Alison asked.
“Not a big one.”
