Page 109 of The Route to You

He took a sip from her drink, grimaced. “Yeah. That’s worse than I expected.”

She laughed more heartily this time, then tilted her head toward him. Even with his sisters flanking them, she couldn’t help but feel the familiar pull of gravity, the happiness that his attention brought her. She felt like a spoiled brat, really. He’d always given her his attention willingly, and she’d been fool enough to reject it so many years earlier.

No wonder his sisters were more wary now. What kind of foolish woman would reject someone like Kyle?

“So, why were you being weird?” she asked under her breath, before she could overthink it.

Kyle stilled slightly, then glanced at her. “I wasn’t being weird.”

“You were.”

“How?”

“Like you didn’t know how to exist in public. Getting all red around the collar. Not looking at me.” She sipped the wine. Thank God. She wouldn’t have been able to finish that beer.

He looked away first, jaw tightening for a second before he exhaled and leaned toward her. “I didn’t know she was coming.”

Sloan followed his gaze—just briefly—toward Anna, then back.

“Okay.” So there is something there. “Ex?” she mouthed.

“No.” His lips curved for a moment. “We can talk about it later tonight.”

She swallowed hard, picking the wineglass up by the stem and avoiding his gaze. “You don’t have to do anything for my sake, Kyle. I know we have a lot to talk about, but you don’t owe me anything. I understand that.”

His eyes flicked back to hers. Something in his expression shifted, subtle, but there. “I know.”

That didn’t exactly make her feel better.

This is so much harder than I thought it would be.

She took a long swallow from her wineglass, then stood, grabbing her bag. “I’ll be back,” she said, vaguely directing her words to Kyle, before she searched for the bathroom.

Sloan hurried toward it, her heart beating faster than she wanted it to.

What if Anna was someone important to him? What if he wanted to date her, or they’d been talking for a while?

They’d never really talked about his dating history. In a lot of ways, much as she wanted to feel like she knew him, she didn’t. She’d known the boy.

Kyle was a man.

She needed to stop assuming he was the same person he’d been. After all, she wasn’t. And God knew she’d hate it if Kyle measured her by her actions from eight years earlier.

Tears were already on her cheeks by the time she reached the bathroom.

Had moving back here been shortsighted?

Because Kyle, clearly, had more to do with her decision than she’d admitted to herself.

Letting out a shaky breath, she hurried into a stall, wiping her cheeks.

She’d just latched the stall door when she heard a voice call behind her, “Sloan?”

Liddy .

“Yeah?” Sloan said, trying and failing to keep the tears from her voice.

“What happened? Everything okay?” Elle’s voice came as she stepped into the stall beside Sloan.