once the school year ended, they were gone.
“Do you know I never went to a single high school dance?” Meg closed her eyes and rested her head against his shoulder.
“That’s hard to believe.” He tightened his arms around her. “You were so beautiful.”
The compliment came out before he could stop it.
Meg laughed as if he’d made a joke. “Give it up, Lassiter. Back then no one, including you, thought I was beautiful.”
“I always told you how beautiful you were.”
“Yes, you did,” she conceded, but there was a disturbing edge to her tone. “Back then you said a lot of things that weren’t true. Lies geared toward getting me in the backseat of your Chevy.”
Cole narrowed his gaze. “Lies?”
“I’m simply stating facts.” Meg pushed him away and took a step back. “You showered me with compliments and told me how much you cared. After we made love, you dropped me. A girl doesn’t need a degree in mathematics to come to that conclusion.”
Cole couldn’t believe it. She was attempting to make him out to be the bad guy in their breakup.
“When I gave you that locket for Valentine’s Day—” Cole paused, feeling the muscle in his jaw jump “—I meant every word.”
“You didn’t return my phone calls. You ignored me at school. It was as if I didn’t exist. Those aren’t the actions of a boy in love.” She gave a humorless laugh. “Of course you said you loved me. You might have even believed it. What hormone-ridden high school boy hasn’t used those words to get into a girl’s pants?”
“Believe what you want.” With his jaw set in a hard angle, he jerked her back against him. Despite a twinge in his knee, he executed a series of turns that left her breathless.
“What I want is answers,” Meg said.
“Really?” he said between gritted teeth. “Appears to me you think you’ve got it all figured out.”
“I want to know why you stopped calling. One day we were the perfect couple. The next day you acted like you didn’t know me.”
The perfect couple? This time it was his turn to laugh. She hadn’t even wanted anyone to know they were dating.
It had been the first of many clues he’d missed. She’d insisted they keep their “relationship” from her family and friends. She’d given him some bull about it being more special when it was their little secret. He realized now that she’d been embarrassed.
He came from the wrong side of the tracks. He hadn’t been in the accelerated classes like all her friends. Honor roll? He’d been lucky to maintain the C average he needed for football.
Perhaps Cole should have told her that he knew she’d betrayed his trust and told Ed he couldn’t read well. Yet, merely recalling that time brought back a flood of painful memories and feelings he’d done his best to forget. The past was the past, he told himself. It couldn’t be changed.
For Charlie’s sake, they needed to move on.
“We were young. We made mistakes,” Cole said when he realized Meg was waiting for a reply. “I don’t know about you, but I look back on that time with a whole litany of regrets.”
Regrets like he wished he’d set out for Texas the day he’d gotten his driver’s license. Meeting and moving in with his uncle had changed the course of his life. If only he’d done it sooner.
He wished he’d slugged Ed Rice. Though he firmly believed violence was rarely the answer, wiping that smirk off Ed’s lips with his fist would have been worth the fallout.
Most of all, he wished he’d never gotten involved with Meg.
With his hand on the small of her back, he steered her with gentle caresses to the beat of the music. Considering his knee, he made a surprisingly good dance partner.
“I have regrets, too,” Meg admitted after a long moment.
She thought about her parents and how she’d lied to them about her relationship with Cole. She hadn’t wanted anyone to know they were dating because deep in her heart she’d known the relationship wouldn’t last. He was the handsome football star every girl wanted to date. She was the red-haired science geek who’d never even kissed a boy.
She wished she hadn’t believed Cole when he said he loved her. Most of all, she wished she’d never gotten involved with him.
“We could start over,” he said in an offhand tone as if it didn’t matter to him one way or another. “Pretend we’ve just met.”
Meg could see where he was going