She jumped off the swing and brushed her hands down her trousers. “I really do need to get home. I’ve got to be back to work tomorrow to do up all the arrangements for the Madison funeral.”
“All work and no play makes Mel a dull girl.”
She shrugged and reached for her purse. “It happens when you own your own business. You know how it is. There’s no real time clock to punch.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m going to be locked up in my office tomorrow going over paperwork.”
They made their way back to the sidewalk and on toward Melissa’s house. “We really did grow up, didn’t we, Cooper?”
His boots sounded on the concrete, steady thumps that seemed slightly out of place and yet reassuring. “Yes, we did. And some of it was painful.”
Melissa had hoped he wasn’t going to bring it up. She shivered in the rapidly cooling air. Without saying a word, Coop took off his jean jacket and slid it over her shoulders.
“Live and learn.” She injected some lightness into her voice, as if it was no big deal.
Her house was just a few blocks away now. She had to put him off for only a minute or so and she’d be home and he’d be gone.
“Live and learn?” Coop stopped and put a hand on her arm, halting her, too. His voice was harsh. “You don’t talk to me for three years and then come out with a flippant ‘live and learn’?”
She pulled her arm away from his fingers. That was twice tonight he’d taken the liberty of touching her. “Maybe you should take the hint that I don’t want to talk about it.”
They carried on for a few minutes, the silence growing increasingly awkward between them. Twenty more steps and she’d be at her front walk. She was nearly there when she realized she couldn’t hear his boots just behind her anymore. For some weird reason her heart was pounding, but she made herself keep going. She took five more steps before his voice stopped her.
“I was wrong.”
She slowed, paused for just a breath of a moment, but kept walking. They weren’t going to do this. Not tonight and not on the sidewalk outside her house.
The memory of their argument was still fresh in her mind—as if it had happened yesterday—and nearly as painful. She’d been so angry at Scott. Angry and hurt with the vitriolic bitterness of a wife betrayed. But with Coop, it had been different. It had been a trust of a different kind that he’d broken. She’d been hurt by that, too. Hurt and disappointed that the one person she’d turned to when everything blew up had already known. He’d betrayed her, too.
“So you said already,” she replied, wondering why the last twenty steps felt like a hundred.
“I thought maybe you’d be willing to accept my apology after all this time.”
His longer legs caught up with her by the time she reached the first row of interlocking patio blocks that wound their way to her front door.
“Melissa. Please. Hasn’t this gone on long enough?”
“What, our hating each other?”
She looked up into his face. In the glow of the streetlamp, he actually looked hurt. That was preposterous. She’d been the person wronged in all of this and they both knew it.
“I never hated you.”
“Well, you sure never cared about me. That was clear enough.”
A muscle ticked in his jaw and his gaze slid away for a moment. he took a deep breath and let it out before looking down into her eyes again.
She really wished he wouldn’t do that. It was so hard to stay angry when he gazed at her that way, all wide eyes and long eyelashes. “Bedroom eyes,” her mother had said once. Eyes that were used to getting him what he wanted.
Melissa also knew she was entitled to her anger. Coop had told her once that he would always be there for her. And when push came to shove, he hadn’t been. There was no way he could deny it.
“I never hated you,” he insisted softly. “Not ever. It was complicated, but you are completely right in that I should have told you. I was wrong, Melissa, and I’m sorry. You have no idea how sorry.”
She did not want to believe him or be touched by his apology. It was a real struggle, because he was looking at her so earnestly that she knew he wasn’t lying. Nor was he trying to charm or joke his way out of anything.
But one thing stuck in her mind from that whole speech, and it wasn’t that he’d admitted he was in the wrong, or that he was swallowing his pride to apologize.
It was that he’d said it was complicated.
“How complicated could it have been, Coop?” She kept her voice down—there were neighbors to consider—but her words were still crystal clear in the cool night. “Scott was cheating on me and you knew about it.”
“Scott was my best friend.”
“So was I. You said you’d always look out for me. You were like my big brother, do you know that?” She lifted her chin and finally said what she’d wanted to for ages. “You knew he was with her in the afternoon and coming home to me at night. Do you know how sick that is?” Tears pricked Melissa’s eyes. “How dirty I felt for months afterward? All it would have taken was a few words from you. I trusted you, Coop.”
He ran his hand over his hair. “Mel.”
Her name sounded ragged coming from his lips. So he wasn’t completely unaffected, either. Good.
“I trusted you,” she repeated, softer now, and a sadness took over where her anger had lived. Sadness and acceptance.
“I was friends with both of you. Have you even considered for one moment how caught in the middle I was? I swear, as soon as I found out I confronted him about it. I begged him to put a stop to it. I demanded.”
“Did you threaten to tell me?”
“Yes.”
“And yet you didn’t.”
He swallowed and looked away. “No.”
“And why is that?”
He didn’t answer, but they’d come this far and she wanted to know. He’d been the one to open the can of worms, and now he would have to deal with her questions. “Why didn’t you tell me, if you told him you would?”
Cooper took a few moments to respond, and when he did his words seemed measured. “Scott said he would deny it, and that you’d believe him.”
She frowned, puzzled. “Maybe I would want to believe him, but don’t you think I’d ask why you would tell me such a thing if it wasn’t true? Come on, Coop.”
He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Look, my intention wasn’t to relive this thing from start to finish, okay? I just wanted to say I was wrong, and that I’m
