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He laughed. “Well, from what I hear, he deserved it.”
The euphoric bubble she’d been floating in burst. “What did you hear?”
She hadn’t discussed Ethan with Jake. Well, not in so many words. She’d told him she’d had a bad break-up in the past, but never mentioned she’d been engaged. It hadn’t been a calculated omission due to having feelings for the jerk. Ugh, nothing could be further from the truth. No, it’d been more of a cowardly really-hadn’t-wanted-to-talk-about-her-biggest-humiliation omission.
Jake brushed a strand of hair away from her eyes. “Just that he cheated on you.”
“The night before our wedding.” The words spilled out in a rush.
“Yeah,” he confirmed softly.
“I’m not in love with him,” she blurted. “I wasn’t trying to hide anything. I just…”
“Didn’t want to tell me.”
“Jake…”Fudge,she’d messed everything up. Tears pricked her eyelids because she knew now he’d be questioning everything she said, wondering if she was giving him the whole story.
“It would be too embarrassing,” he said. It wasn’t a question. In fact, the way he said it almost sounded like he was speaking from experience.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Nothing to be sorry for, Princess. I get it.” He rested his hands on her thighs. The thin scarlet silk of her dress did nothing to protect her from the heat of his touch.
“I asked a girl to marry me once,” he confessed.
He did?
“You did?”
“I was a royal fuck-up in college. Not because I got bad grades. I didn’t.” He started brushing a thumb back and forth on her leg.
Laurel had to force herself to concentrate on his words, and not the feelings his touch invoked.
“I told you my dad died when Jess and I were little?”
She met his gaze and gave a small nod.
“Well, we lost Grandpa Gus when we were in high school.”
“Oh, Jake.” Her heart was breaking for him. The pain in his eyes revealed how important his grandfather had been to him.
“I didn’t really give a crap about anything after that,” he explained. “So, I dropped out of college after a couple semesters and moved to California. The beach and bikinis sounded way better than wasting time on classes I didn’t give a shit about.”
It wasn’t hard to picture Jake on the beach. He was made for it. Blond hair and a body built for shirtless days on the sand.
“That’s where I met Ashley.” He didn’t spit out the name in hate. It was more like he didn’t care enough for it to bother him. “I met her at a beach kegger. She drank too much, threw up, and I drove her home.” He shook his head. “Yeah, that’s the stuff fairytales are made of. There should’ve been a sign: ‘Run the fuck the other direction’.” Lost in thought, he slid his hands down Laurel’s thighs to her knees, then back up and squeezed.
The move shouldn’t have been erotic—especially not while he was talking about his ex-girlfriend—but it was. Anytime Jake touched her, she felt it deep in her core. And with his hands where they were right now, his thumbs inches away from where she needed them…
Laurel bit down on the inside of her lip, just hard enough for the pain to center her. She owed him her full attention, even though he inadvertently was the cause of her mind wandering.
“I was young and stupid and fell hard.”
“You were young,” she emphasized that fact. If he’d graduated at say, eighteen, then did a year of college, that would make him… “Twenty?”
“And a half,” he added. “Still old enough to know better.”
“What happened?”
