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“No. I haven’t thought of it.” That wasn’t strictly true. Work was always on my mind, but with Elise, it was at the back, on a low simmer. That was rare for me.
I let my gaze trail over her. Her feet were kicked up on the ottoman in front of her. Her toenails were polished sky blue, and she had a small blue columbine tattooed on the inside of her ankle. “When did you get that tattoo?”
She rubbed her feet together. “It’s the Colorado state flower. Saoirse took me to get it before I moved, so I’d always have a piece of Colorado with me.”
Someone screamed on the TV, but I was focused on her.
“Do you want another one?”
“Maybe, if there’s another moment in my life I want to mark permanently.”
“Planning to move again?”
She shook her head. “No. I like being near Elliot. This is my home.” She shoved at my knee. “I can’t tell if you like it or not.”
“Your tattoo?”
She lowered her chin, silently saying,“Duh.”
“I do like it. It’s very pretty. I remember putting my mouth on it a few times on our trip.” Her cheeks flushed, and my nostrils flared at the shared memory we weren’t supposed to be talking about.
I wadded up the wrapper with the remains of my dinner inside, tossing it into the paper bag on the floor beside the couch. “I’m glad to know you’re not the type who’d get a man’s name tattooed on you. Otherwise, you’d be spending a fortune to remove it.”
A laugh burst out of her. “You can bet I’m most definitely not that type. Even if I was, getting Patrick’s name on me would have never entered my mind.”
“No?”
“No.” She tossed her trash in with mine and shifted so her legs were tucked on the couch, twisting to face me. “I’ve done a lot of thinking about how I’ve been feeling since the breakup. What he did devastated me, and I’m still getting over that. But I realized I got overhima lot faster than I expected, and it’s not just because I’m so deft at compartmentalizing. I think I chose Patrick because I knew when it ended, I wouldn’t be broken.”
“You always expected it to end? Elise, I thought you were a believer in happy endings,” I admonished.
She rolled her eyes at me then poked my arm. “I am, jackass. I didn’t make those decisions about Patrick consciously, but I think I always knew we wouldn’t wind up together. I think half the reason we lasted as long as we did was because—like you with Marisol—I wanted to prove you and Elliot wrong. The other half was because there wasn’t anything threatening about loving him. He didn’t light me on fire, but then again, he didn’tlight me on fire.”
I’d stopped listening the moment she’d said I was part of the reason she’d stayed with him. My brain imploded with that frustrating revelation. I squeezed my eyes, attempting to process what she’d just said.
“You stayed to spite me?”
Her nails scratched lightly on my forearm, springing my eyes open. “Is that really all you heard?”
“I’m supremely self-centered.”
She huffed. “I mentioned none of this was conscious, right? I wasn’t actively thinking, ‘Oh, I can’t dump Patrick for not taking care of my emotions because then Weston will know he was right and will gloat.’ That didn’t happen. In hindsight, that was very much part of it.”
I reached out, running my forefinger along the pink strap of her bra.
“You really disliked me, didn’t you?”
“Dislike is too strong. I had thoughts, though.” She rubbed her lips together. “To be fair, I now know I was wrong and stupid. I wish I hadn’t wasted so many years shutting you out when we could have been friends.”
I dipped my finger under the strap to rub my knuckle along her skin. “The plethora didn’t help.”
She shook her head, grinning. “No, it most certainly did not.”
“Do you know how much I despise hearing I was even part of the cause of you staying with that guy?”
“I can imagine.”
I unhooked my finger to flatten my palm at the base of her throat. “A lot. If I didn’t think I’d scare the shit out of you, my fist would be meeting drywall right now. I’m sorry, baby. I’m sorry for driving you away.”
