gathering the graded papers in front of him and setting them on the small table between us.
“You didn’t.” Not intentionally, anyway. I can differentiate the two, given the experiences I’ve had with professors in the past. “Don’t worry about it, Professor Ford. It’s fine.”
“It’s not.” He walks around the table and sits on the edge of it, stretching his long legs out and crossing his arms over his chest. “I was surprised to see you Saturday morning, and looking back, I’m a bit embarrassed over my reaction. I just wasn’t expecting…”
“Ainsley?” I guess, putting distance between us like I have something to be embarrassed about. “We get that a lot. I do.”
He rubs the back of his neck. “I didn’t realize you and Danny…” He clears his throat. “I knew you liked him back then, but I didn’t realize you had a kid. It makes even more sense why you were so upset with me.”
I’d get back to the idea that everybody seemingly knew I’d had a thing for Danny, but it’s not what my mind latches onto. “Carter, it isn’t like that. My situation is complicated.”
I notice a curious shift in his gaze, but it goes away quickly as he pushes up. “It’s none of my business. I just wanted to apologize for how I acted.”
Why do I feel the urge to tell him the truth? It’s not some big secret that I’m supposed to keep. Ainsley doesn’t look like me. Anyone who has ever paid attention or stayed in my life would know how she got into my care. They’d also see how much I love her—how much I fucking wish she could have been biologically mine. And that drives the desire to set the record straight even more because I’m angry.
I’m angry at Danny for not loving me. I’m angry at him for choosing someone else. A part of me despises him for dying. Not because he changed my life forever, but because it hurts too much to not see him in any form. Whether our friendship would have ended after the night we slept together or not doesn’t matter, it couldn’t anymore. But if I could do that night over…
“She’s not mine,” I whisper, almost to myself because saying it any louder physically cripples the half-dead organ in my chest. “The world got to see how much I loved Danny, but he never loved me.”
Carter freezes, the marker in his hand gripped tight in his hold as he meets my gaze. He says nothing. I’m not sure there’s anything he could say right now to make the pain any better.
My chapped bottom lip cracks when I run the tip of my tongue over it. “I had to watch him fall in love with somebody else. I was in his wedding. I became his daughter’s godmother.” I click my tongue, letting out a humorless laugh like the whole thing is funny. In a way, it is. “I’m not sure why I subjected myself to that kind of torture when I knew nothing would happen. I just hoped one day…”
“He’d choose you,” he finishes quietly for me. I take a deep breath and nod slowly, feeling pathetic and slimy for having the thoughts.
“I liked his wife, for the record.” It seems odd that I found the woman who took Danny away from me kind, but I did. She was sweet and wanted to be a mother more than anything. More than that, I knew the truth. You can’t steal something that isn’t yours—Danny was always the love of her life, just like she was his. “And there for a blip in time after he lost her, I thought the universe would finally let us happen. I never stopped being there for Danny and Ainsley. It felt right to me. But Danny…”
Danny was in mourning. It never changed even when the years passed. He’d pretend like he was okay, like he’d found a way to heal, but if there’s one thing that was cemented the night we locked ourselves in my bedroom, it’s that he never stopped loving her or grieving her loss.
I could never be what he needed.
Because he needed her.
Shaking my head, I put an escaped strand of thick auburn hair behind my ear. “It doesn’t matter anymore. What’s done is done. I just hate that I’m trapped knowing how pathetic Danny must have thought I was after—” The door opens, and kids begin walking in, cutting me off from making myself sound even more tragic to