Page 65 of Sweet Redemption

None of this does.

I blow on my steaming hot tea and stare out over the rolling hills of the vineyard, trying to lose myself. It doesn’t work. Not when the same words keep playing in my head like a broken record.

He didn’t love her.

How is that possible?

Fall Break Freshman Year Of College

The first time I met Britt we were all freshmen in college, and I was home for Christmas break. And even though Hendrix still had hockey practice and games he’d have to be at, he went to school in Kroydon Hills. So coming home meant coming home to him. For the first time since everything started, we’d be in the same place for more than a night. We’d spent months stealing whatever pieces of each other we could manage. Phone calls between classes. Texts before games. DMs after games. FaceTimes that lasted long past when we should have been sleeping.

But for a few weeks, time would be on our side.

I’m not sure I’d ever been so excited to be back in Kroydon Hills. I told myself I’d missed my family, my friends, my bed, and Mom’s crappy cooking. And I did. But none of them held a candle to the way I missed him.

Young love has its own taste. Its own feel.

You’re still naive enough to believe it’ll all work out.

I might as well have had hearts in my eyes when I finally saw him, but I had no idea that it wouldn’t just be Hendrix and me for most of break.

The first time I saw Britt, my stomach dropped. She was easily five foot nine with long blonde hair and catlike green eyes. She was beautiful, and I wanted to hate her because my boyfriend, the one we’d decided I wasn’t going to tell anyone about, thought she was great.

They laughed at inside jokes. They watched movies together and hockey together. She knew his schedule and all his teammates. Britt got to be there when I couldn’t. Hating her would have been the easy way out. But nothing Hendrix and I ever did was easy.

She was sitting on the couch at the hockey house between two of Hendrix’s teammates when he walked me inside, a Revolution game playing on the television. The same game my parents were currently at. Her eyes landed on Hendrix first, then me, and something flickered across her face as she bit her lip. Nerves maybe? Was she nervous to meet me?

“Hi,” she said softly. “I’m Britt.”

“Serena,” I answered. He’d told me about her. Thought we’d be good friends. And as he tucked me into his side and smiled at the room, I wondered if maybe we could.

Her smile widened. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

Well, that made two of us.

I glanced up at Hendrix to find him already smiling down at me.

Not her.

The hand on my hip squeezed like it was the most natural thing in the world, and I think I finally took my first real breath since walking inside.

“Hey, Sinclair,” one of his teammates called over his shoulder. “You and the Kingston princess gonna watch the game?”

“Nah, man. We’ve got plans.” We didn’t. Not really. Not unless you counted locking ourselves in his room and hiding away from the rest of the town as plans. He dropped his hand and smacked my ass as he guided me up the stairs without ever looking back.

And that was the thing about Hendrix. He never made me feel like Britt or anyone else was my competition. And while I never really thought we were friends, Britt was never my enemy either.

She got time with him I didn’t. Time I envied. But I still got him. And that was all that mattered. The world likes to pit women against women, but I never felt that way about her.

Why would I when I trusted him?

Even years later, when I found out she was going to get to live the life I thought I’d always have with Hendrix . . . She would have his name and his babies and his love . . . She’d have it all. But I couldn’t hate her for it. How could I when she was the better woman? The one who could make him happy.

I didn’t go to their wedding.

Even I’m not that masochistic.

I did send a gift—because my mother raised me right—and apparently, somewhere deep in my psyche, I knew even emotional devastation wasn’t a good enough reason to be rude.