Nash Brothers Box Set - Carrie Aarons Page 0,82

Goat & Barrister for a decade.

We’re ruined, both for each other and other people. Shells of the heart-eyed teens we used to be.

Once upon a time that would have been me standing in front of a kneeling Nash man. But not anymore.

“You okay?” Penelope turns to me, whispering.

Tears glisten in her bright green eyes, and I know that I’m not the only one in the room mourning what should have been.

I hug her tight, our embrace a coverup gesture. To the outside observer, we’re just so happy that our best friend is getting married. But the secret between the two of us is that watching that proposal was like taking a bullet. For me, because the love of my life was standing in the same room, hating me. And for her, thinking about the husband who was now buried in the cemetery five miles away from where she and her kids went to visit him.

Penelope sighs against me and we finally let go, knowing that when we do, we’d better have our best poker faces on.

“Oh, my goodness!” Presley holds up her hand to show us, and we both nod emphatically, smiles at mega-watt volume.

I am truly happy for her. She and Keaton have been through their struggles, both together and separately, and deserve to come out on the winning end.

But, I need a minute. I walk to the back of Presley’s brand new yoga studio, a place I feel like I’ll now be spending a lot of time at. I grab a plastic flute of champagne that someone passes me and sip it as I walk along the mirrored wall.

Inspecting my reflection, I try to see beneath the petite, brunette librarian that everyone always says is, “so pretty and intelligent … a real nice girl.”

Before I know what’s happening, Bowen has cornered me in. Not wanting to make a scene, I stand there, his sullen eyes watching me.

“What happened the other night …”

I cut him off, so sick of his wrath. “I know. You’re going to say it can’t happen again. I get it, Bowen. You don’t want me anywhere near you. I’ve only been getting the message loud and clear for ten years now, thanks.”

“I don’t hate you.”

And then my world stops turning. Noises bounce off my ears, but I don’t hear them. The hair on my skin stands on end with the awareness of his body close to mine. My eyes water from not blinking, from the sheer shock of his statement.

“I don’t know why you’d think that.”

It starts turning again, fury busting full force out of my chest.

“Um … what? You don’t understand why I’d think you hated me? Bowen … you’ve avoided me for ten years. Oh, and before that, you broke up with me with a mere text after I’d just woken up from a coma. Every time we’re in the same room, the sneers and disgust rolling off you somehow tipped me off to your loathing me. Please, don’t stand there and lie through your teeth.”

Now it’s his turn to be shocked. I’ve never really talked back to him, not in the decade we’ve been broken up. Also, neither of us has ever brought up our breakup or the accident so bluntly. Come to think of it, I don’t think we’ve ever talked about them.

Sure, there were the first few months I was healthy enough to hunt him down … this was about six months after the accident. But by that point, he was in a technical school after he could no longer play baseball. He’d moved an hour away, and after the year he’d done that, he went to a firefighting training camp closer to Lancaster. I barely saw him in the two years after he flipped us in a car and shattered our life together.

It wasn’t as if I hadn’t tried though. As often as I could sneak away without my father catching on to where I was going, I’d try to get to Bowen. I’d either seek him out, leave letters under his windshield wipers, email him from fake accounts that my parents wouldn’t notice. It sounds stalker-ish now that I say it out loud, but we were in love. And there was absolutely no closure.

Maybe that’s why I’ve never been able to move on with my life.

Bowen’s glower intensifies. He’s always worn that broody glare, but for me, when we were together, it used to have a layer of smoldering painted into it. When he looked at me, all