digging through her purse for her keys so she would have them ready when she got to her truck. Maybe there was still a chance that the whole day had been just one big nightmare. There was still a chance—a slim one, she knew, but she would take it—that she could wake up from this and find herself back in her normal life, where each day was wonderfully similar to the one before it and where things made sense. She wanted to go back to that life, because having Ryan Ford show up in town after eight years...that did not make sense.
“Katie, stop!” Ryan called out, his voice somehow gentle and firm at the same time, the sound pouring over her like rain, tempting the dried-up place inside her heart—the place she’d given to Ryan when she’d been just a teenager.
And dammit if she didn’t obey.
Katie halted and turned around, her pulse thumping, still reeling from the surprise of seeing him in the pub, of having him so close to her body, and from the strange mix of anger and sorrow that always welled up at his memory...and now his presence.
She’d imagined this moment before...had always envisioned herself coming face-to-face with her past love in such a way, only to meet him with poise and apathy. A single person shouldn’t be allowed to turn another into mush just by his presence, yet that was exactly what he did to her. Years of time passing, of Katie maturing into a hardworking adult and now a parent-to-be, and still the sound of his voice made her want to fall into his arms.
She took a deep breath. Just because he made her feel that way didn’t mean he had to know it.
“What in the world are you doing here, Ryan?”
There, she’d said his name. It tasted bittersweet on her tongue and felt raw coming out of her throat, but there it was. And it hadn’t killed her.
He stopped walking a few feet away from her, the distance more comfortable to Katie than his nearness inside the bar. As long as he stayed over there, she would be fine. As long as she maintained their current proximity—as long as she couldn’t smell the lemon-and-mint soap he still apparently used, and if she couldn’t hear him breathing—she would be okay. She couldn’t allow him to come any closer, even as she cursed herself for wanting nothing more.
“Katie, it’s so good to—” He moved a foot in her direction, and she matched it with one step backward. “It’s good to see you,” Ryan said, shoving his hands into the pockets of his trousers. “I know you don’t want to see me, but it’s good to see you.”
Katie met his eyes and immediately wished she hadn’t.
She watched as his attention moved down to the roundness of her midsection. His eyes grew wide and he swallowed before his lips formed a thin, straight line.
He lingered there for a moment before he looked back up at her. There was softness in his gaze, along with a...hopefulness...that she couldn’t have prepared herself for.
Eight years had done nothing to temper what she’d felt the night of Ryan’s graduation. If she closed her eyes, she could still see the way his features had shifted when, after several long moments of standing silently in front of her, he’d finally understood what she’d been trying to say.
It had taken over a year for Katie to work up the courage to confront him...to force herself to face what she’d been feeling for far longer than she’d been able to admit, and muster enough bravery to share it with Ryan.
She loved him. Not as the best friend he’d been since childhood, but far more. Even at sixteen, she’d known something then that hadn’t changed since: he was her true love...her person. No matter how hard she tried in the coming years, he would not be replaced.
At the time, she’d been naive enough to believe that loving him was enough to make him hers.
She found out soon enough that other things could come first...that other things could matter more. Things like the baby his girlfriend, Sarah, had been carrying—the baby Ryan had found out about only moments before Katie pulled him aside.
She would never forget the way he looked at her when he told her why he had to go and “do the right thing” by Sarah. Even as he’d told her that it was what he wanted, Katie could see the truth in his eyes.
For a second, a single second, she’d seen what she’d known all along. He loved her the same way—the way she wanted him to. He left that night without another word, the expression in his sad, determined eyes seared into her brain...but she knew. She wished she didn’t—perhaps his leaving would have hurt less—but she knew.
When Ryan drove away that night, Sarah by his side in the cab of his old truck, along with the couple’s few possessions and a jar full of cash Ryan had been saving for college, a piece of Katie went along with him.
She had cried and holed up in her room for two days, wrapped in Ryan’s favorite old sweatshirt with Peach Leaf Panthers emblazoned across the front, but when the last tear had fallen, Katie let it drop, and she’d made a vow to let him go. Ryan was a wonderful childhood best friend and an amazing person, but she wasn’t going to let his memory take away the life ahead of her. He’d taken a piece of her heart with him, but he couldn’t have the rest of her, and she would make her own happiness in the world.
Even if the men she loved kept leaving her.
Katie pushed out the breath she’d been holding.
Yeah, she wanted more. She wanted a family. She wanted a husband to share her life with, and she wanted the baby inside of her. She wanted to re-create the joy that had filled her childhood home. But she was a patient woman, and she was willing to wait for those things as long as she needed to. In the meantime, she’d found a way to create a kind of makeshift happiness, and she’d found a way to embrace the parts of the past that she wanted to keep by working at the museum.
So how was it that, in one day, the world she’d built so carefully was falling down around her? And the last piece to hit the ground was Ryan Ford, who stood staring at her, waiting for her to say something.
“Ryan, I don’t... I mean, I never expected to see you again,” she choked out before clearing her throat. “I didn’t think you’d ever come back here.”
He nodded and his shoulders slumped, and Katie felt herself melt into the molten pools of gold and brown inside his eyes.
“I didn’t know you still lived here, Katie. I didn’t think I’d run into you like this. I’m sorry I freaked you out back there. That wasn’t my intention.”
Hearing him apologize tugged at Katie’s heart. Why had she bolted from him? It wasn’t like her to be so impolite, so unkind. And it wasn’t as though he didn’t have the right to visit his own hometown.
She didn’t have to like him, and she didn’t have to spend more than a few more seconds with him, but that didn’t mean she had a right to be rude.
“No, it’s okay. I’m the one who should apologize for brushing you off. Seeing you just...caught me by surprise, I suppose.” She reached up and tugged at a strand of hair that had come loose from her hairdo.
Oh, God.
She still had her hair up in the Gibson Girl. She must look like a complete idiot.
And why did she care, anyway?
It was Ryan. Ryan Ford,
